Frank Terbilcox oral history transcript

1606.pdf
[0.18 MB]
Link will provide options to open or save document.

File Format:

Adobe Reader

1
Oral History Cover Sheet
Name: Frank Terbilcox
Date of Interview: October 29, 2009
Location of Interview: Aldo Leopold Memorial Reserve in Madison, WI Interviewer: Mark Madison and Steve Laubach
Most Important Projects: Getting the Reserve started.
Colleagues and Mentors: Reed Coleman, Howard Mead, Nina and Charlie Bradley
Most Important Issues: Right now Mr. Terbilcox feels that there needs to be people in the field and less in the office and that the Reserve needs more game management and forestry.
Brief Summary of Interview: Talks a little about when he was younger and going hunting. He talks about he origin of the Reserve and mentions Reed Coleman and Howard Mead. Mr. Terbilcox talks about he original goal of the Reserve, which was just to preserve the land instead of seeing it get developed and going to talk to the neighbors and acquiring surrounding properties. He also talks about managing the Reserve, giving tours to the school groups, mowing the trails and having speeches with different organizations in the evenings. Mr. Terbilcox talks a little about Nina and Charlie Bradley and the different ideas of the two organizations. And he talks about how the Reserve has changed since its beginnings and what he would like to see happen with it in the future.
2
Mark: Alright today is October 29, 2009 we’re in the Aldo Leopold Memorial Reserve right near the Aldo Leopold Center with Frank Terbilcox. Am I pronouncing that right?
Frank: Correct, correct.
Mark: And Steve…
Steve: Laubach.
Mark: Laubach and Mark Madison doing an oral history with Frank. So Frank thank you for agreeing to do this, we really appreciate it.
Frank: Well I thought this would be a better place to watch it behind a fire and out the front door maybe we can see a turkey or something.
Mark: Perfect.
Frank: Okay.
Mark: Well Frank the first question we have is, is what do you recall from the, the origins of the creation of the Reserve?
Frank: Well I guess probably the first thing was hunting out here when I was about 12 years you could drive a Model A Ford if you didn’t drive at night. So a good friend of mine was Walter Baxter, who if you look on the plat books he and his brothers owned the Baxter tract for a mile around the property. And Art and Walter was not only shorter than I am but he was a duck hunter and he had a bunch of relations in Milwaukee that liked to take advantage of coming up and hunt but Walter said they always showed up in the best time and on weekends and didn’t bring any food. So anyway one of his friends that he met, well I guess I should start at the beginning; I was 12 years old and driving my dad’s Model A Ford. And I 3
remember coming out here one time with my, with my football coach who lived next door to me that was a great hunter, Paul Kroger, a big 10 miler at Wisconsin and commander of an LCI in the south Pacific, I won’t go on and on but he, Paul taught, told me how to shoot ducks and in a hand made kayak. And we were out on a one storm I know probably in November because it was snowing like mad and the ducks were just everything; cans, will bills you name it, they were here. And until I dropped one on his lap then he said, “You’re hired.” So. Then another time I was out here with my Springer Spaniel and wading up to the top of my hip boots as she was swimming along side of me and I looked up and I thought “Oh God.” And looked for ducks and I just pat her on the head, she swam behind me and I looked up and they weren’t, they were decoys there were all these decoys and he was sitting in his blind; he also had permission to hunt, we could hunt until five o’clock in the evening and then we used to get out of the marsh because Walt Baxter, Pudge was his nickname, would come and, and hunt with, by himself usually in a place that Aldo also hunted. Well I looked up and I said “Oh God I’m sorry.” I said, “I screwed it up.” But he was smoking his pipe I remember but he wasn’t very friendly. I can’t blame him if I busted into his set, you know, there with the decoys so, he could just walk fifty yards and he was on his own property but all ten, eight, ten years ago I tried to take a wide track CAT in there and rebuild all those ponds, damn near buried it right there. But anyway Aldo like, he was a hunter, he could; I could from here to the shack and always get my two roosters, you know, with pheasants, forget it there’s all stock today and so we don’t have any natural reproduction. I haven’t seen our grouse on the place till my friend who sold his farm down a mile away to the DNR this week, 300 hundred acres and it’s completely surrounded by the DNR land well he saw a ruffed grouse last week which is the first one I’ve seen in five years. So, so we had a ruffed grouse season in Sauk County, no absolutely not. So we have pheasant season, we shouldn’t be stocking them, it doesn’t pay. But anyway we’ve cut the deer herd down; Nina was jumping for joy because the less deer the better as far as tree reproduction…
Mark: Yeah.
Frank: …and everything concerned. But my kids don’t like it too much but there’s an eleven pointer in the cooler up there right now so it wasn’t a complete thing but our deer herd, 4
just this last two years since the new management with the DNR has really, now southern Wisconsin evidently has a lot more down in the southwest. But boy we see deer while we’re recording here or anything it’ll, it’ll you know used to see eight or ten of them here but the deer herd; I think we need two things, we need a better forestry management plan on the reserve and we need a game management plan, after all he wrote, Aldo wrote the book, you know.
Mark: Sure, sure.
Frank: But we don’t have it. We’ve got the whole thing out, 16, 1700 acres in all and prairie grass as in Steve was telling, the manager was saying “Oh they’re eating that.” I said “Steve they like alpha, they like a little bit of corn.” Ken has got three acres of corn over here which the cranes are in every day until next year when they eat that pellet stuff, they don’t like that but anyway, going back to coming out here in 1932, probably ’33, my next door neighbor across the street was firing for the Northwestern, he got laid off, [Great] Depression. They couldn’t, my dad couldn’t afford to buy anthracite coal because it was too expensive so those two guys, no chainsaws, hand cross cut saws. They leased, they didn’t own, they leased, well, it was just an agreement, you can have that section for ten dollars on what they, Nina calls or Leopold called Suevanna. Well it was, well the neighbors all around here played ball and they, you know, they get together on some weekend parties and things and there’s a gate across there and that goes back to Mill Creek, which comes farther up river and that’s where; when Aldo got 80 sold it to one of his favorite students I guess Franklin Henica built a cabin there. There’s a pump there that worked last time I was back there and nice stand of native, white, white pine; big, big stuff. But that area, all river bottom, oh now I’ve got a lady that you should talk to up there, Mark isn’t it?
Steve: Steve.
Frank: Steve.
Mark: I’m Mark. 5
Frank: You’re Mark, that’s backwards. Anyway Lillian Green came here and taught at the school up here in 1934, she’s going to be 103 years old and she’s sharp.
Mark or Steve: Wow, wow.
Frank: She can remember everybody that lived here, cutting ice in Chapman’s Lake over here in the wintertime and she’s probably somebody that you should probably interview because, you know, how many good years do you have left. Anyway I make her a batch of fudge once in a while and I can get in to get you to meet her, she’s a lovely lady.
Mark: Cool.
Frank: Lovely lady. And anyway, the Newall Creek property and it’s all on, it’s on the abstract but I’m, it’s a wonder they didn’t pick it up. And then when Aldo bought it of course then came the next thing was came the neighbor down, Ben Gilbert down there and Ben lived, he’s an old bachelor, lived with his folks. And when the water was high he used to have to, he had one cow, he has to, use to get in the boat at the house which is only probably 50, 60 feet of, row over and milk the cow on the manure pile and row and drive, and go back to his cabin and drink the milk or whatever. Well the episode that I was with Aldo here when I was with my dog and I and Aldo meeting over there, we didn’t have much of a conservation I’ll say that. But we, we, I (unclear) went back to my dad’s Model A Ford and got stuck and so I think he charged me three dollars in those days to pull me out with a team and he said “What are you, hell doing out here in the swamp?” And I said “Well I’m getting stuck right now.” Anyway that was between the shack right by where you (unclear) can see the pond there. We call that the Ragan pond but I don’t know why I call it that because he wouldn’t sell it to me cuz of an incident with pointing a shot gun at me cuz they were drinking and shooting the ducks and not picking them up. And anyway that’s where really where Aldo died over there, they all say he died somewhere else but he didn’t because that was Jim Ragan’s dump pile and they were burning it off when it caught fire. And now the stone that I hauled over that’s clear up by the, by the Legacy Center and that’s not where it happened so, anyway. 6
Mark: What about the idea for the Reserve, when did you and…
Frank: Well the idea for the Reserve was meeting Reed Coleman and, and his buddies that were planting the trees, I met Tom then too; Tom was the head of the Republican Party and so was Reed. So I guess I was rolling that direction from my father later on too but we didn’t; everybody, you know, hunted. Aldo could go out in his yard, in his back yard and shoot ducks and geese and Russ Van Hoosen who owns, owned this property right, see the pines up on the hill; that, those are Coleman pines. Just to the side is a section line, section five, and that’s Van Hoosen’s and they bought it back in the 30’s or whenever even ‘20’s, 30’s I mean cuz I looked at an 1922 map yesterday and Van Hoosen’s name wasn’t on it so I would say about 19, during the Depression. And his, Russ’s dad was killed over on the, traffic accident over on [highway] T over there but. Russell has been, he and his wife are both passed away and his son John lives there now and they kept the forty acres from the pines this way to the road. And then Reed and, well Reed’s dad, Tom, bought that and he and Aldo were good friends. You know strange mix I think today Aldo would be a diehard democrat and I know Nina is but the but then he was in a different setup but he; Tom Coleman or let’s see Aldo found the cabin, the Gilbert Cabin down there. And then they moved it I think in 1935 up to where it is, you haven’t seen it yet?
Steve: Yeah, I’ve seen it.
Frank: Oh you’ve been there.
Steve: The Coleman place.
Frank: (to Mark) I don’t know if you’ve been up there.
Mark: No.
7
Frank: Well if you want to go up, we’ll buzz up. But that, right now it needs some repair on it and my daughter’s cleaning it up. There were dead, dead squirrels inside; it was just a terrible mess. But Reed has been super busy at the [Madison] Kipp [Corporation] and not feeling that great himself so. They’re cleaning it up but it needs some new logs around the base cuz it’s, you know, it’s an old, old cabin built in 1800’s. But when Tom took it apart wrote Roman numerals on the thing of it and then moved it up here in I think 1935 and it’s a nice, really a nice cabin but it needs a lot of work on it right now.
Steve: Is that about when the Coleman’s bought the property about 1935?
Frank: I can’t give you the exact date, when Reed, when Reed’s name but that….
Steve: But the…
Frank: Well it could, must have been about that because that’s about the time that they moved the cabin up there and Aldo could have had that cabin, Nina always wonders why they didn’t build that. But Aldo, well first of all he was raising five kids on an university salary then.
Steve: Right.
Frank: And couldn’t afford much so he probably, I think they bought maybe six bucks an acre or maybe a little more than that, you know, and so it was, it was cheap land and he wanted everybody to earn it from; like when they built the Parthenon, which is the outhouse out in back, you know, we’ve, I built it, help built an dug a hole at least and (unclear) the Parathion is still there. And then there was a family by the name of, I think of Alexander, that owned it.
Mark: Yeah.
8
Frank: And Alexander owned it before Aldo did and it. And it, they always talk about alcohol, well they ran a lot of alcohol in Sauk County then, there was the Toohey gang from Chicago and a couple others but they had evidently a still over here too. But the hole is there but then on Reed’s, the road the Chapman Lake Road that goes from Reed’s cabin over to where it comes in on the hillside over there by the cabin, there was, that’s called Chapman’s Lake and it’s named after Parkman Chapman and I’ve read the article that and they didn’t have a town hall in those days they use to meet at each other’s homes and this was 1857 I believe that they had the town meeting that night at the…Parkman Chapman home on Chapman Lake Road. And then there was a bridge across from that went there and that coffee mill that’s on the fire place over there Colleen found it right out in front of the cabin it was, it’s, anyway that still works. And then she found a thunder mug too, you know what a thunder mug is.
Mark: Yeah.
Frank: It’s, now they’re over there. And then there’s all kinds of stuff that guy would of and the stones for the basement were not typical of what’s around here. They bought some red sandstone in and that’s, it’s still there and there’s lilacs and some of these old lilies that you typically find around an old, an old cabin, you know, so.
Mark: Yeah.
Frank: And anyway.
Mark: We were talking about the founding of the Reserve, with Reed.
Frank: Strayed. Well that’s where, what all goes back to meeting, Reed Coleman was the young man and he planted those pine trees that you see that are a hundred foot tall. Toby Sherry, I can’t tell you all the names of the guys, another insurance man from Madison, you ought to get those named from him, but that’s where I first met the kids. Tom I had met a few times and I met his wife, Mrs. Coleman, I’m trying to think of her first name…but she was a 9
delightful lady and I think she use to bug, bug…well talks a lot like I do, she bugs a lot of people. But anyway she use to come over to the shack and, and love to bring and party at the shack with Nina and the family there, but. They started it all off and then one day Reed; I was a UW grad but I met Reed up here and I was running a greenhouse in Baraboo for 18 years and that was no lifestyle for, you know, a family life or anything and he said “How would you be interested in forming…” And I think it started with Howie and let’s see who else. Well Howie and Reed, I would say and myself, and I don’t know Toby Sherry probably was Toby was Vice President of First National Bank in Madison and his birthday’s tomorrow, 83. And no 82 excuse me, younger than I am and my son’s birthday tomorrow too. Buy anyway, they -- they got together and decided that it be worthy because of Aldo and the land and so called land ethic at that time, I don’t think there was any land ethic but they liked what he was doing in preserve, land preservation and they contacted me and that was in 1965 not 1968 but we started in 1965 and he said “Will you work on it?” So I said “Well I’ll talk to the neighbors.” So that included everybody from Lilith’s farm up at the head of the, all the way to every one of them and, you know, some of them were reluctant about this strange people, I would say the Anchor property maybe and Kamerer property, Turner property but they’re all elderly people then. And to go in but they said “We’ll considering selling it.” And so that was my job to go in and contact them, you know, and ridiculously low prices we were buying for a hundred…an inflated price of an hundred dollars an acre, you know, in those times. And that was inflated up there but they were happy to get that, that money but so the Anchor farm, those people had a tavern up, north of the Dells. The Lewis farm, which was then owned by the Kamerer farm and I’ve some, a couple of nice pictures of them; he built his own, trained his own team of oxen and he would always show up at a fair with a team of oxen dressed like the pioneers and he was a sky worker from Chicago that moved up here. And I use to go over but that didn’t hurt…ah, Pat. Pat and Tim would come with me and we’d mow the lawn and plow this thing, never sent them a bill; I just did it because they were delightful old people. Well, anyway, that didn’t help, that didn’t hurt when it came time to buying it and the Kamerer tract was impossible to get in there and out without getting stuck many times. And so we that and both of the ladies that lived on this place had terrible husbands; they were mean and they would maybe kick their wife or just derogatory things. So Mr. Kamerer and Mr. Turner weren’t too high on my list of being good husbands but the women succeeded 10
them or preceded no succeeded them in their deaths so when it came time and a couple of the kids said “Well, you know, Frank always took care of our folks and everything.” So when it came to buy it, we got it. I remember when we did, Pat or Reed told you this but I think we were settling on fifteen thousand dollars for a hundred and fifty or a hundred and sixty acres of land. And I said, “That sounds fair to me.” And I got a kick under the table from Reed.
[Everyone laughing]
Frank: So that ole Republican. He still reminds me of it, I hope it’s on tape. He thought we’d get it a little cheaper and but anyway we got it and that’s the Turner tract And…
Mark: For those early meetings, how were they organized with the landowners? Was it one on one at the kitchen table?
Frank: Yeah well we’d go to their house and I sat down and visit with them and Reed came with me on a couple instances but; especially the Turner one. And, but well cuz he wasn’t on the Kamerer one because Emma died and when we took, helped take care of her, take her shopping and everything. And then the kids came back to me and they were, we knew they were going to sell it and there’s no love between I think the sister and the brother or the son and daughter. But anyway they decided that “Let’s see Frank.” So. And the other one the Anchor tract was one that was kind of separated because they wanted to use it as a more of a shoot, deer hunting and they would ask for permission for six or eight different people to come in and I said “Well we really can’t do that, you and your husband.” And they still lived up here and they run a very successful business that lives up the road a mile. But there was a real animosity there about me giving permits to ten people rather then three people or something and so. But anyway the one that controlled it, was had the Tavern up at Adams and he comes, said “Frank it’s for sale” and I don’t know what they bought for, they’d have to tell you the figure a hundred or two hundred dollars an acre. And then coming down then we would hit the Leopold tract and that’s as far as we got, well except for the thirty acres down below that I couldn’t, couldn’t buy so I had a friend of mine buy it in Chicago and we had to pay thirty thousand dollars for thirty acres so, but that was the size we paid but we go it. And 11
then on this side Mr. Van Hoosen came to me and said that he wanted to sell at least eighty, I forget, it was eighty or a hundred twenty and it was reasonably priced and he set the figure and, and I think it was a hundred and fifty an acre, whatever it was. And…but Mr. Van Hoosen and we had to complete and his son still owns property there so we had that. And then we come to ours and we have three hundred and five acres and ours is in the process of talking about what we’re going to do with ours now with it, with it and whether we’ve got different options. I would like to keep maybe eighty acres for the boys to hunt on or well we can do all this but the prices have gone up.
Mark: Yeah.
Frank: But it’s, the land per, when you think about what land values are I’m so sick of appraisers coming in and charging three thousand dollars or four thousand, not to me (unclear) appraisal figures. But they come and appraise land that you’ve gotten twenty thousand dollars an acre in your lifetime and they offer you four thousand dollars for what it’s worth but anyway we’re in that, that (unclear) right now.
Mark: So when you guys first set up the agreement, one of the questions we had was, was there a business plan to cover anticipated expenses?
Frank: No I think I, here let me just; I’ll read it. I think I’ll go through these. Well we’ll see. Did anyone invite to participate; well okay you ask the questions now.
Mark: [Laughing] All right, well we just answered the one; there was none of that cuz you covered some of this already. The other one was when you first formed the Reserve, what were your original goals for the Reserve?
Frank: Well just to preserve it and, and the land using the Leopold land ethic but I don’t think most of the people we talked to knew that there was a land ethic. They, they; we didn’t talk land ethics we just said that it was good to see some land preserved instead being it developed and whatever and it was very loosely, uh, I don’t know if Howie ever attended just 12
Reed and I and we had fairly, regular monthly but you know what monthly meetings are at a board meeting.
Mark: And you already covered the next one about the land ethic. That was something that was more implicit. You guys didn’t spend a lot to time talking about it.
Frank: (Speaking at same time) I had to look up implicit in the dictionary. I said what’s the difference between explicit and implicit? Figured it out.
Steve: Well you had an idea about when you went and talked to people like the Anchors or the Kamerers or the Turners that didn’t come up, it was more just you were trying to convince them why it was good to sell it to you?
Frank: Well yes. We…well they, they could see what we were doing here, I always made some trails with a big tractor and thing. And Howard loved to cut, he always looked at a tree and it was board feet you know. And he cut logs every year and thing but we tried to do ‘em that, he should do it with the assistance of a forester or something, if you; we’ve got the best forester in the state I think right now.
Mark: Right.
Frank: Ah, Rick Livingston, but I think the ones that we had for several years wouldn’t get their butt out of the office, you know, to come and look and see whether it should be marketed or whether it should be left for another year and stuff. But anyway, the…then with the people, the Anchors they seldom ever got down they just inherited it and you know I think they looked at it as deer hunting and we didn’t have deer in here at all until in the ‘40’s. I use to hunt up in Forest County, finally discovered that hell my own property was starting; we killed, they killed more deer in Fairfield than I think they did in the whole county in 1940’s then we just, it started to explode because we has had the right land quality.
13
Mark: In those early years, when you founded the reserve, did you have a plan on how it would be managed or who might use it?
Frank: Well to manage it I used to run at least, practically one University or students; I didn’t like to work with—oh what’s the, Shabazz one school or something in Madison because…
Steve: The high school?
Frank: Well there was a, yeah there was a; these were troubled kids and the first thing you know there one of them was on the shack roof or stuff like that and I said, you know, usually cut ‘em right off of the gate and I said “We’re coming here to get an experience in land conservation.” And I said, “I won’t tolerate any screwing around here, you know, I’m climbing all those tree stands.” Or whatever and I got along pretty good with most of the kids but I didn’t like to work with kids that were six or eight years old because they didn’t comprehend what we were trying to do. And so but we would run, I had so many University, we did a University that I never heard of Knox University, I think that’s in Illinois. But we had students every week from high schools all over the state and we were well received, so.
Mark: Was that part of the vision or did that just happen (unclear)?
Frank: No I just thought that was something we needed to be, the young kids coming up and then plus all the project work that we did that I didn’t know was part of the job. I don’t if we’ll get into that but.
Mark: Let me ask you one more question from the early period.
Frank: Okay.
Mark: How did the neighbors who weren’t part of the Reserve feel about what you guys were doing? 14
Frank: Well we tried to, we tried like with Mr. Schoepp over here we tried to buy and explain to him but Conrad conned me into thinking he owned this side of the hill, well that was my land; that was, his was the other side. Conrad was a rare individual and, but he subdivided his land into four or five different tracts and some of it’s still subdivided. And he’s got, got a couple good really good ones and he’s got a couple that the rest of the neighbors hate because they, you know, they’re slobs and they take; they don’t know the land ethic but they don’t own a lot of land but they sure screw it up. But we’ve got some good neighbors and, you know, we, you don’t win them all.
Mark: Well were they, did they learn anything from the Reserve here or did they…?
Frank: They, most of them, some of them did and some of them didn’t. We have some, some very, I’m trying to think the name of the people that live on the river road but they, there are some that are good (unclear) and some of, most of them get benefits from (unclear) bird species--a lot of them love to hunt deer but that has drastically reduced this year because most of the Reserve is all in prairie grasses now, no, no hay, no corn, no food patch. Aldo had a food patch right out there, just on the other side of the trees in the distance. He had food patch that and I got a, we got a picture of that one and Nina has it of Mr. Van Hoosen plowing with a team, plowing Aldo Leopold’s food patch just across the road from the shack. And he was planting things for grouse and pheasants but it rubbed off years ago and that’s what we need right now. You can’t, you’ve got a game management enforcement issue that’s what we need.
Mark: How did, speaking of management since we’re on that, how did the management change from when you took over compared to before when you took over; how did you decide on management?
Frank: Well it was…
Mark: It was pretty quick.
15
Frank: It was (unclear) but what you got to, I guess I’d (unclear) step down or step back or forward but when I was on site in 1932 and I was just a youngster. We were cutting wood and that whole river bottom was pretty much open because, and this is never really been until you guys come, I guess it’s never been at least now it’ll get maybe some attention but that was probably three to four hundred cattle grazing over there all the time because when they needed cheap feed put ‘em on the river bottom, when they need water put ‘em on the river bottom, when if flooded and it got so high that they couldn’t get off they went to the shack and got on the hill right up in back of the shack. So they call that the sand blow, that wasn’t a sand blow like on my project at Spring Green that was because these cattle were three hundred head of them up there, stuck on top of the hill and I, I remember talking Mr. Turner and Lillian Green who is still alive, their cattle were over here grazing there. And, but as a result of that taking the cattle off of it then you have this influx of restoration, river bottom restoration but it was never, never ever a sand blow it was all created by too many cattle up there and then somebody that, Alexander I presume, had a little farm there but maybe they were selling booze instead of; they couldn’t grow much corn on that, that’s all sand over there.
Mark: Okay so that was management and then…
Frank: Then, then that just taking the cattle off of there changed it slowly but when during my time we mowed the, even myself, I was over there but I was mowing it for a different reason; I was mowing it to get geese in there cuz I was going game management but there’s still equipment over there, which I could show you there, below the Van Hoosen’s where they had the hay raked and they’d mowed the hay and they’d take the hay to the Ringling Brothers Circus in Baraboo for three dollars a load, that’s a big tractor load. Three bucks a load delivered to the Ringling Brothers Circus and sell and every year they got a crop of marsh hay, well now that’s changed and now we’ve got that stuff out there and stuff that reed canary grass which is the bane of the Reserve right now. And so but I don’t know if they can turn that into green power and we’d make it alcohol again and burn it in our cars.
Steve: They’re working on it. 16
Frank: Good.
Steve: I’ve heard about it. But, so you started; Reed hired you in 1968?
Frank: Well in 1965 I started on it on my own and I started talking to the people. In 1968 I think I got twelve thousand dollars a year and lived in my own house but then the real work started and I found out it that wasn’t just management here and you’ll read that in my report of where I was; I was head of the Leopold, which is now the Leopold Center in Madison.
Steve: Right.
Frank: Building trails, building ponds, firing it down there. Then I got sent to Spring Green and I created the Spring Green Reserve, which is owned by The Nature Conservancy, I bought and sold that. I went to work for Sam Johnson at the Johnson’s, the headlines in the paper read “Racine Industrialist Raping Bayfield County.” That was on the headlines of the Milwaukee Journal. And I think it was Jay, no (unclear) he was a student of mine. And Jay, whatever his name was, I called him up and I said “Last thing you’ll ever do up here will be to write an article like that.” And ended up with I think Sam sent us a check for a hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars of Johnson stock for the good work.
Mark: Well that’s good.
Frank: That was good, probably better put that one on tape but it was, they did a—what they were doing was there was a DNR employee and Buzz (unsure of last name) was a classmate of mine, Buzz was ex, he’s passed on now, he was the head of the DNR. And Buzz, anyway the guy came and he said, “We’re going to get that Sam Johnson he’s got a boat on Owen Lake.” Lake Owen is it up there, I think in Bayfield. But anyway all of, he had the permit from the head of the road division up there to build this little pond, across the pond cuz Sam on owns the Marengo, the other big streams up there, very wealthy people. But he did a lot for the community and this guy says “We’re gonna get that, that boat house off there once and 17
for all.” And so he wrote this article, a degrading article, in the State Journal and Milwaukee Journal. And anyway as a result of it that guy took an early retirement, two years early. I went down and talked to Buzz and told him why the reason why they were going after Sam Johnson and the guy got canned or took an early retirement. Anyway that was one of them, another one was working at Sheboygan on getting the water into the Lake Michigan without running and screwing up Sheboygan; it goes on and on.
Mark: But when you were here you did it informally and then formally you were hired.
Frank: I was sent on these things by Reed to work with different things to encourage them to follow Aldo’s things and then I worked down, through Sam then I worked on the nature centers around Milwaukee, like the Root River and place where their snagging the salmon in the streams, an article in the paper the other day but I had lots and lots of classes there.
Mark: What were the primarily management activities you were doing on this land? You already mentioned a lot of school groups and mowing trails and that.
Frank: Schools here, mowing trails, speeches with different organizations at night or whatever you had to do. But basically we got away from that thing that I think; we got away from game management and we got away from forest management, which I think were two important things that Aldo did. Now part of the board members they would rather have none, you know, we had more deer than we needed that’s for sure. But it’s ridiculous right now we should have seen six or eight deer coming across the marsh here or something and they’re not into, if we get, if we, when we manage the deer we also manage; now we did a project a couple years ago where they cut down, well maybe it’s been six or seven years, time passes pretty fast. And they cut down all the Aspen where we use to shoot ruff grouse cuz the two guys who like to hunt ruff grouse are, were Starker he passed on, that’s Starker pond named after him and Carl, Carl is 90 years old now; he comes regularly he stayed with Cornell University. Estella was here last week with the Seattle University and University of 18
Washington, oh I don’t know if it’s Seattle; she lives, they sent a bunch of stuff out to her today. But anyway.
Mark: When you were managing, though you were managing…
Frank: We were managing without influx mainly from the kids but that, that really didn’t they had lots, Starker especially was into wildlife ponds, he loved to hunt. Carl, Carl did a little bit of hunting but he was; Starker was the one loved hunt grouse and deer and moose and every other damn thing. In Mexico he was in, he was involved in Alaska; he was on the game board, so. He and I kind of hit it off and we would, he would coach me about getting a pond here or whatever and I don’t know how many ponds we built but a lot of them and there’s pictures in here of building ponds.
Mark: So he gave a lot of input into the, the landscape management here?
Frank: I don’t, well to me he did, I don’t know as he did to the family but he got; Starker was the one that was, he was doing research in Alaska and Mexico and he loved, he was a hunter and fishermen more so than the other kids so. And then when, well that may be an upcoming question then we Nina and …
Mark: Well that’s what I was going to ask next. Yeah let’s go into how management changed in 1975 when they came on?
Frank: Well they were interested but they didn’t become part the, they never become part of; they wouldn’t join the Sand County Foundation. They didn’t or I never became involved or why but they figured they had better control if they did it through the family and they had set up their own foundation. Well that created, from an outside view of mind, because they didn’t have the workings of the original foundation they were going their separate way and I, I don’t know if the board, I won’t mention names out here I try, you’ll have to, cut out what you don’t want, you know it’s sensitive but when you don’t have complete you’re all in one but they decided to go with the LMR road rather than Sand County Foundation and they hired 19
a couple of different people that I see them, they never get up period. And then they did some real ridiculous burns that destroyed all kinds of property that, where I had orchids and everything else growing and when you don’t see management from Madison, you know, it cuts the project up so we’re at, where we are today with most of it being done. Thank God by, but we still need better management here on the Reserve. We need directors but we don’t need so many students, we need somebody out in the woods cutting and spraying; my daughter does more spraying for me than I get done from, from kids out of school. And Nina the other day said better get Terri in here to help teach some of the students how to build a fire in the shack for instance.
Mark: So who was directing the management after Nina and Charlie came back, were they directing a lot of the work?
Frank: No they were doing, directing theirs and well there was another, well I guess actually they were responsible for bringing Brent Haglund in from, from Bozeman [Montana] from the University out there. And Charlie, they hired him and then I never see him maybe I haven’t seen him this year and he’s with Sand County and he manages Sand, helps manage Sand County and arrange some of the burns, it’s been ridiculous burns.
Mark: But when you were still manager, were you, were working with Nina and Charlie and others or…
Frank: No, no I just; I was doing my thing.
Mark: Okay.
Frank: And then but if I didn’t like something they’re doing, they damn well got told about it but some of the guys they hired to fire and cut, terrible and, but the guys that were doing it and I’ll say this both, both Kevin and, [Kevin] McAleese now Kevin comes up once in awhile. But they’ve gone different directions, the Sand County Foundation has gone into Zimbabwe into Africa; all over the damn country and giving ten thousand dollar grants to 20
every rancher it seems out west. I just, I’m retired and the, the direction; I can take you right over the hill and you’d probably gag but when you see what they burned over, destroyed all this stuff over on that side.
Steve: Turner’s Ridge.
Frank: Turner Ridge, where Mrs. Turner took me and showed me orchids and stuff, not that it wouldn’t have changed, it would’ve, but not the kind of ridiculous burns that they were doing; they hired a guy that didn’t know anything about burning and then they were going to burn out to the river bottom and maybe open it up like I remember it.
Mark: Right.
Frank: But when you have one or two hundred head of cattle running on the place, it’s a lot difference than taking them off of it, it’s going to grow up. And then as I said you know you can’t live old memories I guess. You can’t remember old girlfriends. [Everyone laughing] Anyway. What do we got?
Steve: So that the Leopold family was managing their property and the Sand County Foundation was managing, around…
Frank: Really and Charlie was, Charlie Bradley was just a remarkable man but, you know, he was getting up there in years too and I worked; Charlie and I burned around the shack just the two of us. And one day Charlie (unclear) “Frank I think you better come over here.” Well it’s a good I did or we’d probably have burned the shack down. But anyway the fire was, I said “Don’t worry about it Charlie.” I’ll just lay a little stream of water down…
Steve: Yeah.
Frank: …and it’s going towards the river when the wind is right so, OK, but…Charlie was good but he, I could; I don’t know if I got on him about that, his, his farewell to the 21
membership was Sand County and we, Charlie and I would drive down and meet at the Madison Club, usually a board meeting, boring. And it didn’t get done but Charlie was never they were trying to do to burning, they were more environmentally oriented Charlie and Nina were more ordered towards prairie restoration and burning than game management and wood management. And when you got this you gotta have a little bit of everything, you can’t do it, you can’t one direction and this was what; well Nina’s 92 years old and I’m, I’ll be 83 and we need some better, we need some better direction from and we can’t have ‘em sitting over in that, that center over there and is never out in the woods. My daughter comes out here and I’ve got her with a hand sprayer or a saw, she doesn’t use a chain saw but, when I was hired I didn’t have a chain saw and that’s written in there, I had one of these axes that you swing and it looked like a Vietcong death trap out there you know. And so it’s a lot of changes over here but it’s, it’s, it’s well worth keeping and preserving and…
Mark: Just, just briefly what was your game management plan?
Frank: Well I wanted a little bit of everything. I wanted to keep our, all of our ---Luna was really ticked off when they took all the Aspen along the, in order to mange ruffed grouse you had to have four age groups of management and there was a fellow in Minnesota, Gorden (unclear) I forget well he’s dead now, he has a game management plan for ruff grouse at, at the University of Minnesota. And in fact it was Bob Ellars, was it Bob Ellarson or what, no who was the other one at, who was at UW?
Steve: Joe, I think.
Frank: No it wasn’t Joe, Joe was my teacher cuz on, or Aldo died in April of ’48 and I had, would have had him in the fall but I had Joe Hicky and Bob McCabe. And a couple others (unclear).
Steve: So, whoever, there, there was one other person at UW who, who you were thinking about that with, with Game Management.
22
Frank: Yeah with Game Management.
Mark: So you were managing for a bunch of different things.
Frank: Yeah.
Mark: For…grouse…
Frank: We were managing, well I could take my, my dog and get two roosters between the shack but you don’t, we don’t but we don’t have the farm portion in there. We don’t have any corn, we don’t have anything that critters can eat except prairie grasses and Steve was trying to tell me “Oh they’re eating all that prairie.” I says, “Hell they’re browsing out there, they don’t have any.” They got to go ‘cross county trunk T and now Sand County bought that and this, except there’s wheat in there right now but it goes for 1700 acres over there without any food crops for game. And then I built, my wildlife ponds and I did cost sharing out here through the feds, you know, there’s fifteen thousand dollars in this pond here but it’s assessed at four thousand dollars an acre.
Mark: Did you, did you plant food crops for the deer?
Frank: Oh sure I had, Tim got’s one he’s got three acres of corn over here right now and every day I kick the cranes out of it but that’s fine. And I mean there’s damn few deer on the place right now except that’s the first; and Tim’s got to shoot a doe now for, he’ll shoot with a doe, well we’re going to get the buck I guess but the doe was well it’s better eating that’s for sure but you can’t, you can’t harvest all the deer and keep shooting deer and deer and deer and without proper food for them and if you’re going to have pheasants you gotta have some ag crops. Pheasants aren’t any good in that stuff. And ruffed grouse you gotta have Aspen so they’re not managing the Aspen properly. But it’s hard to talk to anybody that’s sittin’ on their butt in Madison if they don’t get up here and manage the place. And with Steve, Steve is a real good, Steve Swenson is a real good all around guy but I notice now he’s doing writing over there and stuff and not getting the crew out. In fact that’s what Nina wants to do, she 23
wants to get somebody to train the kids out here when they’re onsite management. And I completely agree, it’s; but it takes money and it takes fund raising.
Mark: What was your forestry plan out here, in the Reserve?
Frank: Well the forestry plan was under, all but ten acres of my farm is in the forestry plan, which anybody that owns land is a damn fool if he doesn’t get out and get it in because I get; my taxes are from this farm are just, including the house, are just over four thousand dollars a year. My neighbor across the street has about twenty acres and his is more than mine is because he doesn’t have it in a forest management plan, which you have to have ten acres minimum and to go in through it. And then you gotta, you gotta do cuts, certain time I cut twice; I cut a hundred thousand board feet once and sixty-seven thousand feet and when we were doing cut…
Mark: There’s a deer.
Steve: Yeah. Just ran by, a yearling.
Frank: Yearling.
Steve: Yeah.
Frank: Hooray a deer! Well Tim’s maybe’s out hunting. There’s one big, great big buck out here that, the older boy Pat is a mining engineer at Fon du Lac. And Tim shot this one that’s in the, in the cooler up there; he shot that just down the road but he’s waiting for that big one. Okay, next, next question.
Mark: Well let me ask you this cuz you’ve talk about it, we might as well get it on tape now. What, how would specifically like to see this place managed in the future?
24
Frank: Well I would manage, management with more with, I don’t know what comes first but anyway both forestry and game management; you got to have some game management plans, you can’t beat everything into prairie, I like prairie, I do like it. And we love those prairie flowers but they don’t feed game and they all say “Oh they do feed game we see all these browse counts and got flags all over the place at what the deer are eating.” I said “But the deer aren’t there.” And the young man that’s the head of the deer management, what’s his, God his name is in the paper all the time now he’s really taken it on in but I think that we should have a member of the board that’s on the, for the state level like we had before; we’ve got people that we don’t, how do you keep politics out it (unclear). We need more onsite managers here they can’t be sitting over in that, I go over there and everybody’s in the, over there writing. There’s one of Steve’s here but Steve isn’t; I’ve noticed Steve isn’t getting out and getting into the working part of it. If I were here I’d have, well I had my walking trails cuz that get those disabled or, to different parts to see what’s happening. I’d have maybe, I hate science, but (unclear) and they get plenty of tours here but they gotta say what they’re doing for game management that we’re harvesting. All my farm except ten acres, in fact here’s my map I got yesterday from my forester and this, this is the Leopold Shack and here’s our land here and it says whether it’s in the trust or whether it’s in and everything oh the things are in the red, in the red here are my, that’s in the forest management plan but that’s all forest the rest of it pretty much marsh.
Mark: Yeah.
Frank: But that’s stuff is at a lower tax rate then, you know, it’s hard; I told my farmer across the road over here that he could save at least two to three thousand dollars a year on his taxes if he’d get a managed forestry plan, which you have to have a minimum of ten acres to get into it and you have to agree to do certain things on it. You got to harvest it when it’s ready, plant trees, do things to improve it and, but this is my forester today sent me a map like this of what, I can only harvest about or manage about and then you can sign up for a grant for forestry grants to do, to kill buckthorn, to kill reed canary grass, well not reed canary grass that one we haven’t tackled yet, garlic mustard and so but I’d like my trees right here but I can’t do it for a couple years yet but when we do it next time it’s going to be worth fifty 25
thousand dollars cash for the trees. So that’s added money that goes back into the Foundation and now when we, if we were to sell the Foundation, our land, they will, either they will enter the forest plan or I have to pay back taxes on it. And also I have twenty-four acres of, of CRP…
Mark: Conservation Reserve.
Frank: …and things like that so.
Mark: Earlier you were talking about deer and we saw one here.
Frank: Yeah good.
Mark: How did, how did deer management change under the LMR?
Frank: Well right they issue permits to shoot as many deer as, well.
Mark: But how was it in the early days, in the sixties when you first set up the reserve?
Frank: Well before we started I was hunting in Forest County I wasn’t hunting here. And then our, just, what happened wasn’t so much what we did here it’s what the farmers around the area were more corn, more hay; things became better and probably more hunters going up north like I did.
Mark: Yep.
Frank: And then I come back and I said “Jesus.” I had my best buddy, who died at age 47, when we’d come back from a hunt in Alaska and we’re out here and three bucks came out right by the shack over there and he shot all three of them. We were really, well it didn’t happen like that he shot a buck and then he said “I’ll make a drive cuz I know there’s another 26
buck.” Made a drive and it, ran back to him and he shot it. And he did it a third time and I said, “You’re grounded.”
Mark: How about the overall reserve, did you work with the other landowners to come up with a deer management…?
Frank: No we didn’t work with any, no everybody in fact the guys on the other side of the highway posted their land and wouldn’t let anybody on it and they’d come over and had permission to hunt over here. And they were coming over here to hunt cuz they know there were more deer. No we didn’t have much cooperation except I cut the numbers of hunters down on our farm to our family and several others; we had a total of probably twelve hunters on our farm and we all quote “filled our tags” or whatever, we bow hunt we don’t rifle hunt much, mostly bow hunting. And Starker or Aldo would have like that because he hunted with a bow in Mexico I think. And when he met Estella down in, in…
Mark: Yeah she was a famous archer.
Frank: Yeah.
Mark: Let me ask you one more thing and I’ll let Steve ask you some questions, he’s been waiting very patiently but we heard this from Reed and you mentioned the mowing of the trails and so on. How did you lay out those trails? How did you decide where to put the trails?
Frank: You just look at the lay of the land and what’s a good trail to walk to see trees, the marsh, wildlife ponds, waterfowl, whatever and I got, I had, at least up until my health failed; I have trails out over the ditch banks and where only brave people fair can walk on except my son Tim, he’ll go anywhere but he hasn’t buried it yet.
Mark: Alright well let me let Steve ask some questions. He’s been waiting very patiently.
27
Steve: Yeah I had a couple questions, you mentioned Reed a lot. How is Howard Mead involved with you?
Frank: Well Howard, I guess, Howard was the editor of Wisconsin Trails Magazine and Nancy, I never have, Nancy, I don’t think, wasn’t involved up here at all but Howard just thought it was a good idea; he’s environmentally oriented but he was in lots of things. Howard is just been in things all of his life and now mainly was riding bicycles but except Nancy said “If he doesn’t start keeping up I’m not taking him anymore.” I said “Nancy!” They were going to Italy.
Steve: We heard from Reed that, that it was the three of you that sat down together…
Frank: Well at the first time we, we did but we; Howie was not really involved in it except in the very beginning, beginning but I haven’t seen Howard in several years. And he was, Howard was in, in lots of different things…
Steve: Okay
Frank: …you know, but Howard was there when we started because he was getting some good write-ups, probably in Wisconsin Trails, and he was and Howard is a real neat guy, so. We met his family when they were young but we haven’t had any contact in years but Howard was there from its, I think maybe to steer Reed along the way.
Steve: In the early days.
Frank: Yeah.
Steve: And then I had one other question you mentioned that schools groups came out here like 1965, right around that time. So would schools just, did you contact the schools or did they hear about you and call you?
28
Frank: No they just got word of the, word of the; it was a good, cheap, probably.
[Some speaking at same time]
Steve: Was it a, they’d come out…
Frank: They’d come out with a school bus and…
Steve: For a couple of hours or so.
Frank: Yeah they would, and some and the Baraboo schools would be out here at maybe five, five-thirty in the morning and he was the best teacher, Gerald Scott and (unsure of name) and his, he was the best, he led more students to better environments; John Horton, he died last year, he was a conservationist; he owned Hawks Garden Center in Milwaukee and he’s just a terrific guy.
Steve: Yeah.
Frank: And, but he, he led more people to, to the environmental field than anybody I ever knew.
Mark: Now did you lead those tours?
Frank: Yeah, I led the tours and we had two places where we could guide the bus up in here, see and hear the grouse drumming off the log.
Steve: Okay so you were teaching them, you were teaching about natural history?
Frank: Well I guess you call it natural history; I call it ruffed grouse management.
Mark: Did you teach about Leopold? 29
Frank: Pardon.
Mark: Did you, I’m sorry I’m stepping on Steve here but I wanted, I’m curious, did you teach them about Aldo Leopold?
Frank: Oh they had already had that in high school. He was a…
Mark: A better education back then.
Frank: Better, oh the biology teacher; he was fantastic. Oh yeah we, Leopold we read, well, no couldn’t read Sand County Almanac well yeah I guess we could but he, not only led them here, he led them at every phase of Devil’s Lake; we’re blessed here in Sauk County.
Steve: Yeah, yeah.
Frank: But we had people, with these buses coming in from oh I, I don’t know if I made a list of all of them but there’s a lot of them that you could go down to Root River down at Sam Johnson’s and they’re in the different prairies, I think we went to Minnesota to see Gordon Gullion was the guy with ruff grouse…
Steve: Oh okay.
Frank: …Gordon Gullion. We went up there, we went up there with Bob Ellarson and Orrin Rongstad, Orrin and Bob were both hand in hand but my professors, when I go back to think the guys I had, jeesh I had the, I had Norm Fassett, I had, what’s the, the one’s that; all the ones that helped build the arboretum in Madison, I mean I had the very finest, Henry Ahlgren was my advisor. And some guys that were in the University, oh that was, I’m trying to think what’s (unclear) but they had a big discussion, five out of the four, five guys, whether they should take two extra cases of beer or when we were going, they were going north and they ask me to come in and consult what they should take on their trip up north. I said, “I think you better take a canoe and a life preserver.” You know, anyway, but the guys that I had 30
when Emil Truog in Soils, all these good professors I had I just lucked out that’s all. I was, I got out, I got discharged on a Friday and my dad originally on Monday and my roommate was first string quarterback at the University of Wisconsin and that was in ’44, he was roommate and his two good guys that were with him was, Har, no that was Ted, he had Harvey Kuehn in baseball with. But the other ones were there football players were, one played for the Chicago Bears, Don Kent played for Chicago Bears and the other one, the other one kicked for Detroit Lions, that was Elroy, not Elroy---
(End of Tape 1 at minute 59:10, start tape 2)
Frank: …and Fred Nagas, if you know who Fred Nagas was.
Mark: Yeah.
Frank: And he played football too but those guys picnic and I on Wednesday night and we worked on Jordan’s out on Regent and Allen slinging hamburgers.
Steve: Yeah.
Frank: And we picked us up and they would, I didn’t play I was too little but Elroy could take about three bounces down the hill and he’d stuff it, you know, right there. And they were all singing L A V A, Lava soap ad, you know, and Elroy would start singing L A V and that’s…
Steve: Yeah.
Frank: But anyway. I had fun growing up, I’ll tell you it’s.
Mark: Do you have any more questions while I’m switching tapes.
31
Steve: Well I guess, I’ll, I’ll ask a little bit more about the school groups. You said you had all the way down to age eight? You said you didn’t like…
Frank: I didn’t like kids at (unclear). I liked the kids that were in junior high school and up and that were taking, well mainly biology…
Steve: Okay, so it’s for their biology.
Frank: …mainly biology but then I got this one from I know from Madison that these were, well they need a fair chance but we’ve got a school between here and Baraboo, Fairfield Center School, that has five or six students; I don’t know what they’re budget is to run this place but they got them out there, they got this open, they mow their grass. It looks like, I don’ t think we should waste our, the way the educational thing is; I’d close that thing and put them somewhere in Baraboo. But he says “Well we got the facilities we got…” They got a soccer field out there and they got a baseball and a basketball and I don’t think our economy today; they can get those kids in Baraboo somewhere, not to run a separate facility for this, so.
Steve: Yeah.
Frank: I should run for school board but I don’t, I’m too old for that.
Mark: I’ve got one final question for you that’s on here and I think it’s a good one, it’s a good summation one and that is, it’s kind of a two part one but do you think the Reserve met the original expectations…?
Frank: Not yet, I don’t think it’s met it yet because I think we need, we need less supervision over there and more people out in the field getting project work done and you know, I know there are days when you can’t get out well then but it seems like they’re doing one, probably, top one right now is fundraising. Now I just heard today and I don’t well I guess that’s, I’ll tell you that after we tape, but. We, you need “x” numbers of dollars coming in to run a place like this and I don’t know what that is between because I say; every month I get something 32
from Sand County where another ten thousand dollars here, another ten thousand dollars here, in Zimbabwe, God knows where in the United States that they’re money’s going to. And we started off as a, as a organization up here but there’s a separation between the two foundations, you know, you got to have dollars rolling in they’ve got Bob Lang over there with fund raising. And, and then you got Buddy and Steve and then you got Alana with, suppose to be running the Reserve, some of the stuff. I got, I gave them, I had a fifteen thousand dollar grant this year, five thousand, seventy-five hundred cash. And they didn’t get done on that what they were suppose to get done and that’s, I couldn’t do it so I gave it to them for seventy-five hundred cash and I think, don’t think they got the check yet but I was disappointed entirely with getting the garlic mustard sprayed in the prairie. They said well they couldn’t spray it, I said “How come my boy, who I don’t even want firing one night burned over two hundred acres (unclear).” That night I looked up and the whole hillside was on fire up there, he had my tanker up there burning probably been drinking Miller Light and burning and that’s not the way it’s done.
Mark: And I think you told us what your future goals are and that would be more game management and forestry.
Frank: I think, well…
Mark: Or tell us (unclear) the things you don’t mention.
Frank: Well, yeah, more people in the field and less in the office.
Mark: Okay. I guess one other thing we should ask is, is cuz you’ve talked a little about it but what, what aspects of Leopold either the person or his writings has inspired you all these years?
Frank: Well I didn’t really; I didn’t know Aldo to know him. We’d probably been out here shooting ducks (unclear) but anyway the, the, I think that he would have liked more game management and more forestry; he’s ahead of the Forestry Department for God’s sake and, 33
you know, that’s reason enough and then game management he wrote the book. And we don’t have game management up here except for what little I do and I try to get some food patches but if I were to go up and plant food patches I’d probably get shot or not shot but; they don’t, they don’t want more deer but you can have control of deer by shooting more does and, and which they did but Tim blames the reserve for everything if he doesn’t see deer every night, you know. And then the Department of Natural Resources right now is screwing up here, now this was a mark yesterday in the paper about how many deer they had in southwestern Wis, southwestern Wisconsin. Well I, I don’t like my name in the paper but Frank Tiggs writing articles about deer management in Sauk County but here, right particular, here but we don’t have; somebody told me they saw a grouse the other day, the first time a grouse we’ve seen in three or four years, why have a season? Why have a pheasant season when they’re all coming from Pardeeville or from the game farm? That’s not game management, game management is getting the habitat when you can afford or can raise the birds. And all we’re doing is supporting the DNR and then get somebody, the head of the DNR, that’s not politically inclined, so.
Mark: Steve did you have any questions.
Steve: I guess I’d like to hear how you did that beautiful prairie restoration out outside of…
Frank: Well.
Steve: …the road right down here.
Frank: That four thousand dollar prairie restoration per acre. I just was up there, were you up there today or did you…?
Mark: We went by it…
Steve: On the drive.
34
Mark: …yeah on the way.
Frank: Before we go out there why don’t we take a quick drive up to show the view of it and then show you what my neighbor just built up there. But anyway he’s across the fence and he just had a stroke or a heat attack so he needs a place to hunt deer but I thought he did it a little extravagant. Anyway the, I, there’s an article, whole article written on the prairie there for you, you’re taking with you.
Steve: Okay.
Frank: That’s on Signey Holtz. In 1840 there was probably better prairie then because we didn’t have the trees and same thing on the river bottom; it grew up. And we use to have, what’s the, the little bird, “peents” in there.
Steve: Woodcock.
Frank: Woodcock, we use to have woodcock over there when it was more open. You could; woodcock come in there in the fall and, about now, and I could jump woodcock everywhere. Not now because it’s different, a different phase. Well if you’re gonna manage; and then we had all the cattle over there that grazed it, it was never like it is now and there never was such a thing as a, as the burn, the sand blow, that was all just cattle that were rubbing their butts on the, up on the hill because they had to get there or drown. And the, and the mowing of the marsh hay was another phase of it and farming is another phase of it.
Steve: And that’s where that land is?
Frank: Yeah I’ll walk you through there one, someday when you’re up if you want to take a, I’ll ride with, I’ll borrow the (unclear) I can’t walk anymore. But the, but you know everything was a different phase of our life and the same with the deer management herd, but the DNR need “x” number of dollars to keep these guys in Madison busy and I hesitate to jump on them because (unclear) talk to him one on one and show him, just come up and sit in 35
my yard. Well you saw it, we saw deer, we said; I’ve seen half dozen good bucks, the rut’s starting and now so they’re coming across through that thing. I saw a buck there the other day I hope Pat gets a shot at that one so, well we can look at this one that Tim got up here (unclear)
Mark: Did you have anymore?
Steve: No, that’s good.
Mark: Thank you Frank, appreciate it.

Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections.

1
Oral History Cover Sheet
Name: Frank Terbilcox
Date of Interview: October 29, 2009
Location of Interview: Aldo Leopold Memorial Reserve in Madison, WI Interviewer: Mark Madison and Steve Laubach
Most Important Projects: Getting the Reserve started.
Colleagues and Mentors: Reed Coleman, Howard Mead, Nina and Charlie Bradley
Most Important Issues: Right now Mr. Terbilcox feels that there needs to be people in the field and less in the office and that the Reserve needs more game management and forestry.
Brief Summary of Interview: Talks a little about when he was younger and going hunting. He talks about he origin of the Reserve and mentions Reed Coleman and Howard Mead. Mr. Terbilcox talks about he original goal of the Reserve, which was just to preserve the land instead of seeing it get developed and going to talk to the neighbors and acquiring surrounding properties. He also talks about managing the Reserve, giving tours to the school groups, mowing the trails and having speeches with different organizations in the evenings. Mr. Terbilcox talks a little about Nina and Charlie Bradley and the different ideas of the two organizations. And he talks about how the Reserve has changed since its beginnings and what he would like to see happen with it in the future.
2
Mark: Alright today is October 29, 2009 we’re in the Aldo Leopold Memorial Reserve right near the Aldo Leopold Center with Frank Terbilcox. Am I pronouncing that right?
Frank: Correct, correct.
Mark: And Steve…
Steve: Laubach.
Mark: Laubach and Mark Madison doing an oral history with Frank. So Frank thank you for agreeing to do this, we really appreciate it.
Frank: Well I thought this would be a better place to watch it behind a fire and out the front door maybe we can see a turkey or something.
Mark: Perfect.
Frank: Okay.
Mark: Well Frank the first question we have is, is what do you recall from the, the origins of the creation of the Reserve?
Frank: Well I guess probably the first thing was hunting out here when I was about 12 years you could drive a Model A Ford if you didn’t drive at night. So a good friend of mine was Walter Baxter, who if you look on the plat books he and his brothers owned the Baxter tract for a mile around the property. And Art and Walter was not only shorter than I am but he was a duck hunter and he had a bunch of relations in Milwaukee that liked to take advantage of coming up and hunt but Walter said they always showed up in the best time and on weekends and didn’t bring any food. So anyway one of his friends that he met, well I guess I should start at the beginning; I was 12 years old and driving my dad’s Model A Ford. And I 3
remember coming out here one time with my, with my football coach who lived next door to me that was a great hunter, Paul Kroger, a big 10 miler at Wisconsin and commander of an LCI in the south Pacific, I won’t go on and on but he, Paul taught, told me how to shoot ducks and in a hand made kayak. And we were out on a one storm I know probably in November because it was snowing like mad and the ducks were just everything; cans, will bills you name it, they were here. And until I dropped one on his lap then he said, “You’re hired.” So. Then another time I was out here with my Springer Spaniel and wading up to the top of my hip boots as she was swimming along side of me and I looked up and I thought “Oh God.” And looked for ducks and I just pat her on the head, she swam behind me and I looked up and they weren’t, they were decoys there were all these decoys and he was sitting in his blind; he also had permission to hunt, we could hunt until five o’clock in the evening and then we used to get out of the marsh because Walt Baxter, Pudge was his nickname, would come and, and hunt with, by himself usually in a place that Aldo also hunted. Well I looked up and I said “Oh God I’m sorry.” I said, “I screwed it up.” But he was smoking his pipe I remember but he wasn’t very friendly. I can’t blame him if I busted into his set, you know, there with the decoys so, he could just walk fifty yards and he was on his own property but all ten, eight, ten years ago I tried to take a wide track CAT in there and rebuild all those ponds, damn near buried it right there. But anyway Aldo like, he was a hunter, he could; I could from here to the shack and always get my two roosters, you know, with pheasants, forget it there’s all stock today and so we don’t have any natural reproduction. I haven’t seen our grouse on the place till my friend who sold his farm down a mile away to the DNR this week, 300 hundred acres and it’s completely surrounded by the DNR land well he saw a ruffed grouse last week which is the first one I’ve seen in five years. So, so we had a ruffed grouse season in Sauk County, no absolutely not. So we have pheasant season, we shouldn’t be stocking them, it doesn’t pay. But anyway we’ve cut the deer herd down; Nina was jumping for joy because the less deer the better as far as tree reproduction…
Mark: Yeah.
Frank: …and everything concerned. But my kids don’t like it too much but there’s an eleven pointer in the cooler up there right now so it wasn’t a complete thing but our deer herd, 4
just this last two years since the new management with the DNR has really, now southern Wisconsin evidently has a lot more down in the southwest. But boy we see deer while we’re recording here or anything it’ll, it’ll you know used to see eight or ten of them here but the deer herd; I think we need two things, we need a better forestry management plan on the reserve and we need a game management plan, after all he wrote, Aldo wrote the book, you know.
Mark: Sure, sure.
Frank: But we don’t have it. We’ve got the whole thing out, 16, 1700 acres in all and prairie grass as in Steve was telling, the manager was saying “Oh they’re eating that.” I said “Steve they like alpha, they like a little bit of corn.” Ken has got three acres of corn over here which the cranes are in every day until next year when they eat that pellet stuff, they don’t like that but anyway, going back to coming out here in 1932, probably ’33, my next door neighbor across the street was firing for the Northwestern, he got laid off, [Great] Depression. They couldn’t, my dad couldn’t afford to buy anthracite coal because it was too expensive so those two guys, no chainsaws, hand cross cut saws. They leased, they didn’t own, they leased, well, it was just an agreement, you can have that section for ten dollars on what they, Nina calls or Leopold called Suevanna. Well it was, well the neighbors all around here played ball and they, you know, they get together on some weekend parties and things and there’s a gate across there and that goes back to Mill Creek, which comes farther up river and that’s where; when Aldo got 80 sold it to one of his favorite students I guess Franklin Henica built a cabin there. There’s a pump there that worked last time I was back there and nice stand of native, white, white pine; big, big stuff. But that area, all river bottom, oh now I’ve got a lady that you should talk to up there, Mark isn’t it?
Steve: Steve.
Frank: Steve.
Mark: I’m Mark. 5
Frank: You’re Mark, that’s backwards. Anyway Lillian Green came here and taught at the school up here in 1934, she’s going to be 103 years old and she’s sharp.
Mark or Steve: Wow, wow.
Frank: She can remember everybody that lived here, cutting ice in Chapman’s Lake over here in the wintertime and she’s probably somebody that you should probably interview because, you know, how many good years do you have left. Anyway I make her a batch of fudge once in a while and I can get in to get you to meet her, she’s a lovely lady.
Mark: Cool.
Frank: Lovely lady. And anyway, the Newall Creek property and it’s all on, it’s on the abstract but I’m, it’s a wonder they didn’t pick it up. And then when Aldo bought it of course then came the next thing was came the neighbor down, Ben Gilbert down there and Ben lived, he’s an old bachelor, lived with his folks. And when the water was high he used to have to, he had one cow, he has to, use to get in the boat at the house which is only probably 50, 60 feet of, row over and milk the cow on the manure pile and row and drive, and go back to his cabin and drink the milk or whatever. Well the episode that I was with Aldo here when I was with my dog and I and Aldo meeting over there, we didn’t have much of a conservation I’ll say that. But we, we, I (unclear) went back to my dad’s Model A Ford and got stuck and so I think he charged me three dollars in those days to pull me out with a team and he said “What are you, hell doing out here in the swamp?” And I said “Well I’m getting stuck right now.” Anyway that was between the shack right by where you (unclear) can see the pond there. We call that the Ragan pond but I don’t know why I call it that because he wouldn’t sell it to me cuz of an incident with pointing a shot gun at me cuz they were drinking and shooting the ducks and not picking them up. And anyway that’s where really where Aldo died over there, they all say he died somewhere else but he didn’t because that was Jim Ragan’s dump pile and they were burning it off when it caught fire. And now the stone that I hauled over that’s clear up by the, by the Legacy Center and that’s not where it happened so, anyway. 6
Mark: What about the idea for the Reserve, when did you and…
Frank: Well the idea for the Reserve was meeting Reed Coleman and, and his buddies that were planting the trees, I met Tom then too; Tom was the head of the Republican Party and so was Reed. So I guess I was rolling that direction from my father later on too but we didn’t; everybody, you know, hunted. Aldo could go out in his yard, in his back yard and shoot ducks and geese and Russ Van Hoosen who owns, owned this property right, see the pines up on the hill; that, those are Coleman pines. Just to the side is a section line, section five, and that’s Van Hoosen’s and they bought it back in the 30’s or whenever even ‘20’s, 30’s I mean cuz I looked at an 1922 map yesterday and Van Hoosen’s name wasn’t on it so I would say about 19, during the Depression. And his, Russ’s dad was killed over on the, traffic accident over on [highway] T over there but. Russell has been, he and his wife are both passed away and his son John lives there now and they kept the forty acres from the pines this way to the road. And then Reed and, well Reed’s dad, Tom, bought that and he and Aldo were good friends. You know strange mix I think today Aldo would be a diehard democrat and I know Nina is but the but then he was in a different setup but he; Tom Coleman or let’s see Aldo found the cabin, the Gilbert Cabin down there. And then they moved it I think in 1935 up to where it is, you haven’t seen it yet?
Steve: Yeah, I’ve seen it.
Frank: Oh you’ve been there.
Steve: The Coleman place.
Frank: (to Mark) I don’t know if you’ve been up there.
Mark: No.
7
Frank: Well if you want to go up, we’ll buzz up. But that, right now it needs some repair on it and my daughter’s cleaning it up. There were dead, dead squirrels inside; it was just a terrible mess. But Reed has been super busy at the [Madison] Kipp [Corporation] and not feeling that great himself so. They’re cleaning it up but it needs some new logs around the base cuz it’s, you know, it’s an old, old cabin built in 1800’s. But when Tom took it apart wrote Roman numerals on the thing of it and then moved it up here in I think 1935 and it’s a nice, really a nice cabin but it needs a lot of work on it right now.
Steve: Is that about when the Coleman’s bought the property about 1935?
Frank: I can’t give you the exact date, when Reed, when Reed’s name but that….
Steve: But the…
Frank: Well it could, must have been about that because that’s about the time that they moved the cabin up there and Aldo could have had that cabin, Nina always wonders why they didn’t build that. But Aldo, well first of all he was raising five kids on an university salary then.
Steve: Right.
Frank: And couldn’t afford much so he probably, I think they bought maybe six bucks an acre or maybe a little more than that, you know, and so it was, it was cheap land and he wanted everybody to earn it from; like when they built the Parthenon, which is the outhouse out in back, you know, we’ve, I built it, help built an dug a hole at least and (unclear) the Parathion is still there. And then there was a family by the name of, I think of Alexander, that owned it.
Mark: Yeah.
8
Frank: And Alexander owned it before Aldo did and it. And it, they always talk about alcohol, well they ran a lot of alcohol in Sauk County then, there was the Toohey gang from Chicago and a couple others but they had evidently a still over here too. But the hole is there but then on Reed’s, the road the Chapman Lake Road that goes from Reed’s cabin over to where it comes in on the hillside over there by the cabin, there was, that’s called Chapman’s Lake and it’s named after Parkman Chapman and I’ve read the article that and they didn’t have a town hall in those days they use to meet at each other’s homes and this was 1857 I believe that they had the town meeting that night at the…Parkman Chapman home on Chapman Lake Road. And then there was a bridge across from that went there and that coffee mill that’s on the fire place over there Colleen found it right out in front of the cabin it was, it’s, anyway that still works. And then she found a thunder mug too, you know what a thunder mug is.
Mark: Yeah.
Frank: It’s, now they’re over there. And then there’s all kinds of stuff that guy would of and the stones for the basement were not typical of what’s around here. They bought some red sandstone in and that’s, it’s still there and there’s lilacs and some of these old lilies that you typically find around an old, an old cabin, you know, so.
Mark: Yeah.
Frank: And anyway.
Mark: We were talking about the founding of the Reserve, with Reed.
Frank: Strayed. Well that’s where, what all goes back to meeting, Reed Coleman was the young man and he planted those pine trees that you see that are a hundred foot tall. Toby Sherry, I can’t tell you all the names of the guys, another insurance man from Madison, you ought to get those named from him, but that’s where I first met the kids. Tom I had met a few times and I met his wife, Mrs. Coleman, I’m trying to think of her first name…but she was a 9
delightful lady and I think she use to bug, bug…well talks a lot like I do, she bugs a lot of people. But anyway she use to come over to the shack and, and love to bring and party at the shack with Nina and the family there, but. They started it all off and then one day Reed; I was a UW grad but I met Reed up here and I was running a greenhouse in Baraboo for 18 years and that was no lifestyle for, you know, a family life or anything and he said “How would you be interested in forming…” And I think it started with Howie and let’s see who else. Well Howie and Reed, I would say and myself, and I don’t know Toby Sherry probably was Toby was Vice President of First National Bank in Madison and his birthday’s tomorrow, 83. And no 82 excuse me, younger than I am and my son’s birthday tomorrow too. Buy anyway, they -- they got together and decided that it be worthy because of Aldo and the land and so called land ethic at that time, I don’t think there was any land ethic but they liked what he was doing in preserve, land preservation and they contacted me and that was in 1965 not 1968 but we started in 1965 and he said “Will you work on it?” So I said “Well I’ll talk to the neighbors.” So that included everybody from Lilith’s farm up at the head of the, all the way to every one of them and, you know, some of them were reluctant about this strange people, I would say the Anchor property maybe and Kamerer property, Turner property but they’re all elderly people then. And to go in but they said “We’ll considering selling it.” And so that was my job to go in and contact them, you know, and ridiculously low prices we were buying for a hundred…an inflated price of an hundred dollars an acre, you know, in those times. And that was inflated up there but they were happy to get that, that money but so the Anchor farm, those people had a tavern up, north of the Dells. The Lewis farm, which was then owned by the Kamerer farm and I’ve some, a couple of nice pictures of them; he built his own, trained his own team of oxen and he would always show up at a fair with a team of oxen dressed like the pioneers and he was a sky worker from Chicago that moved up here. And I use to go over but that didn’t hurt…ah, Pat. Pat and Tim would come with me and we’d mow the lawn and plow this thing, never sent them a bill; I just did it because they were delightful old people. Well, anyway, that didn’t help, that didn’t hurt when it came time to buying it and the Kamerer tract was impossible to get in there and out without getting stuck many times. And so we that and both of the ladies that lived on this place had terrible husbands; they were mean and they would maybe kick their wife or just derogatory things. So Mr. Kamerer and Mr. Turner weren’t too high on my list of being good husbands but the women succeeded 10
them or preceded no succeeded them in their deaths so when it came time and a couple of the kids said “Well, you know, Frank always took care of our folks and everything.” So when it came to buy it, we got it. I remember when we did, Pat or Reed told you this but I think we were settling on fifteen thousand dollars for a hundred and fifty or a hundred and sixty acres of land. And I said, “That sounds fair to me.” And I got a kick under the table from Reed.
[Everyone laughing]
Frank: So that ole Republican. He still reminds me of it, I hope it’s on tape. He thought we’d get it a little cheaper and but anyway we got it and that’s the Turner tract And…
Mark: For those early meetings, how were they organized with the landowners? Was it one on one at the kitchen table?
Frank: Yeah well we’d go to their house and I sat down and visit with them and Reed came with me on a couple instances but; especially the Turner one. And, but well cuz he wasn’t on the Kamerer one because Emma died and when we took, helped take care of her, take her shopping and everything. And then the kids came back to me and they were, we knew they were going to sell it and there’s no love between I think the sister and the brother or the son and daughter. But anyway they decided that “Let’s see Frank.” So. And the other one the Anchor tract was one that was kind of separated because they wanted to use it as a more of a shoot, deer hunting and they would ask for permission for six or eight different people to come in and I said “Well we really can’t do that, you and your husband.” And they still lived up here and they run a very successful business that lives up the road a mile. But there was a real animosity there about me giving permits to ten people rather then three people or something and so. But anyway the one that controlled it, was had the Tavern up at Adams and he comes, said “Frank it’s for sale” and I don’t know what they bought for, they’d have to tell you the figure a hundred or two hundred dollars an acre. And then coming down then we would hit the Leopold tract and that’s as far as we got, well except for the thirty acres down below that I couldn’t, couldn’t buy so I had a friend of mine buy it in Chicago and we had to pay thirty thousand dollars for thirty acres so, but that was the size we paid but we go it. And 11
then on this side Mr. Van Hoosen came to me and said that he wanted to sell at least eighty, I forget, it was eighty or a hundred twenty and it was reasonably priced and he set the figure and, and I think it was a hundred and fifty an acre, whatever it was. And…but Mr. Van Hoosen and we had to complete and his son still owns property there so we had that. And then we come to ours and we have three hundred and five acres and ours is in the process of talking about what we’re going to do with ours now with it, with it and whether we’ve got different options. I would like to keep maybe eighty acres for the boys to hunt on or well we can do all this but the prices have gone up.
Mark: Yeah.
Frank: But it’s, the land per, when you think about what land values are I’m so sick of appraisers coming in and charging three thousand dollars or four thousand, not to me (unclear) appraisal figures. But they come and appraise land that you’ve gotten twenty thousand dollars an acre in your lifetime and they offer you four thousand dollars for what it’s worth but anyway we’re in that, that (unclear) right now.
Mark: So when you guys first set up the agreement, one of the questions we had was, was there a business plan to cover anticipated expenses?
Frank: No I think I, here let me just; I’ll read it. I think I’ll go through these. Well we’ll see. Did anyone invite to participate; well okay you ask the questions now.
Mark: [Laughing] All right, well we just answered the one; there was none of that cuz you covered some of this already. The other one was when you first formed the Reserve, what were your original goals for the Reserve?
Frank: Well just to preserve it and, and the land using the Leopold land ethic but I don’t think most of the people we talked to knew that there was a land ethic. They, they; we didn’t talk land ethics we just said that it was good to see some land preserved instead being it developed and whatever and it was very loosely, uh, I don’t know if Howie ever attended just 12
Reed and I and we had fairly, regular monthly but you know what monthly meetings are at a board meeting.
Mark: And you already covered the next one about the land ethic. That was something that was more implicit. You guys didn’t spend a lot to time talking about it.
Frank: (Speaking at same time) I had to look up implicit in the dictionary. I said what’s the difference between explicit and implicit? Figured it out.
Steve: Well you had an idea about when you went and talked to people like the Anchors or the Kamerers or the Turners that didn’t come up, it was more just you were trying to convince them why it was good to sell it to you?
Frank: Well yes. We…well they, they could see what we were doing here, I always made some trails with a big tractor and thing. And Howard loved to cut, he always looked at a tree and it was board feet you know. And he cut logs every year and thing but we tried to do ‘em that, he should do it with the assistance of a forester or something, if you; we’ve got the best forester in the state I think right now.
Mark: Right.
Frank: Ah, Rick Livingston, but I think the ones that we had for several years wouldn’t get their butt out of the office, you know, to come and look and see whether it should be marketed or whether it should be left for another year and stuff. But anyway, the…then with the people, the Anchors they seldom ever got down they just inherited it and you know I think they looked at it as deer hunting and we didn’t have deer in here at all until in the ‘40’s. I use to hunt up in Forest County, finally discovered that hell my own property was starting; we killed, they killed more deer in Fairfield than I think they did in the whole county in 1940’s then we just, it started to explode because we has had the right land quality.
13
Mark: In those early years, when you founded the reserve, did you have a plan on how it would be managed or who might use it?
Frank: Well to manage it I used to run at least, practically one University or students; I didn’t like to work with—oh what’s the, Shabazz one school or something in Madison because…
Steve: The high school?
Frank: Well there was a, yeah there was a; these were troubled kids and the first thing you know there one of them was on the shack roof or stuff like that and I said, you know, usually cut ‘em right off of the gate and I said “We’re coming here to get an experience in land conservation.” And I said, “I won’t tolerate any screwing around here, you know, I’m climbing all those tree stands.” Or whatever and I got along pretty good with most of the kids but I didn’t like to work with kids that were six or eight years old because they didn’t comprehend what we were trying to do. And so but we would run, I had so many University, we did a University that I never heard of Knox University, I think that’s in Illinois. But we had students every week from high schools all over the state and we were well received, so.
Mark: Was that part of the vision or did that just happen (unclear)?
Frank: No I just thought that was something we needed to be, the young kids coming up and then plus all the project work that we did that I didn’t know was part of the job. I don’t if we’ll get into that but.
Mark: Let me ask you one more question from the early period.
Frank: Okay.
Mark: How did the neighbors who weren’t part of the Reserve feel about what you guys were doing? 14
Frank: Well we tried to, we tried like with Mr. Schoepp over here we tried to buy and explain to him but Conrad conned me into thinking he owned this side of the hill, well that was my land; that was, his was the other side. Conrad was a rare individual and, but he subdivided his land into four or five different tracts and some of it’s still subdivided. And he’s got, got a couple good really good ones and he’s got a couple that the rest of the neighbors hate because they, you know, they’re slobs and they take; they don’t know the land ethic but they don’t own a lot of land but they sure screw it up. But we’ve got some good neighbors and, you know, we, you don’t win them all.
Mark: Well were they, did they learn anything from the Reserve here or did they…?
Frank: They, most of them, some of them did and some of them didn’t. We have some, some very, I’m trying to think the name of the people that live on the river road but they, there are some that are good (unclear) and some of, most of them get benefits from (unclear) bird species--a lot of them love to hunt deer but that has drastically reduced this year because most of the Reserve is all in prairie grasses now, no, no hay, no corn, no food patch. Aldo had a food patch right out there, just on the other side of the trees in the distance. He had food patch that and I got a, we got a picture of that one and Nina has it of Mr. Van Hoosen plowing with a team, plowing Aldo Leopold’s food patch just across the road from the shack. And he was planting things for grouse and pheasants but it rubbed off years ago and that’s what we need right now. You can’t, you’ve got a game management enforcement issue that’s what we need.
Mark: How did, speaking of management since we’re on that, how did the management change from when you took over compared to before when you took over; how did you decide on management?
Frank: Well it was…
Mark: It was pretty quick.
15
Frank: It was (unclear) but what you got to, I guess I’d (unclear) step down or step back or forward but when I was on site in 1932 and I was just a youngster. We were cutting wood and that whole river bottom was pretty much open because, and this is never really been until you guys come, I guess it’s never been at least now it’ll get maybe some attention but that was probably three to four hundred cattle grazing over there all the time because when they needed cheap feed put ‘em on the river bottom, when they need water put ‘em on the river bottom, when if flooded and it got so high that they couldn’t get off they went to the shack and got on the hill right up in back of the shack. So they call that the sand blow, that wasn’t a sand blow like on my project at Spring Green that was because these cattle were three hundred head of them up there, stuck on top of the hill and I, I remember talking Mr. Turner and Lillian Green who is still alive, their cattle were over here grazing there. And, but as a result of that taking the cattle off of it then you have this influx of restoration, river bottom restoration but it was never, never ever a sand blow it was all created by too many cattle up there and then somebody that, Alexander I presume, had a little farm there but maybe they were selling booze instead of; they couldn’t grow much corn on that, that’s all sand over there.
Mark: Okay so that was management and then…
Frank: Then, then that just taking the cattle off of there changed it slowly but when during my time we mowed the, even myself, I was over there but I was mowing it for a different reason; I was mowing it to get geese in there cuz I was going game management but there’s still equipment over there, which I could show you there, below the Van Hoosen’s where they had the hay raked and they’d mowed the hay and they’d take the hay to the Ringling Brothers Circus in Baraboo for three dollars a load, that’s a big tractor load. Three bucks a load delivered to the Ringling Brothers Circus and sell and every year they got a crop of marsh hay, well now that’s changed and now we’ve got that stuff out there and stuff that reed canary grass which is the bane of the Reserve right now. And so but I don’t know if they can turn that into green power and we’d make it alcohol again and burn it in our cars.
Steve: They’re working on it. 16
Frank: Good.
Steve: I’ve heard about it. But, so you started; Reed hired you in 1968?
Frank: Well in 1965 I started on it on my own and I started talking to the people. In 1968 I think I got twelve thousand dollars a year and lived in my own house but then the real work started and I found out it that wasn’t just management here and you’ll read that in my report of where I was; I was head of the Leopold, which is now the Leopold Center in Madison.
Steve: Right.
Frank: Building trails, building ponds, firing it down there. Then I got sent to Spring Green and I created the Spring Green Reserve, which is owned by The Nature Conservancy, I bought and sold that. I went to work for Sam Johnson at the Johnson’s, the headlines in the paper read “Racine Industrialist Raping Bayfield County.” That was on the headlines of the Milwaukee Journal. And I think it was Jay, no (unclear) he was a student of mine. And Jay, whatever his name was, I called him up and I said “Last thing you’ll ever do up here will be to write an article like that.” And ended up with I think Sam sent us a check for a hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars of Johnson stock for the good work.
Mark: Well that’s good.
Frank: That was good, probably better put that one on tape but it was, they did a—what they were doing was there was a DNR employee and Buzz (unsure of last name) was a classmate of mine, Buzz was ex, he’s passed on now, he was the head of the DNR. And Buzz, anyway the guy came and he said, “We’re going to get that Sam Johnson he’s got a boat on Owen Lake.” Lake Owen is it up there, I think in Bayfield. But anyway all of, he had the permit from the head of the road division up there to build this little pond, across the pond cuz Sam on owns the Marengo, the other big streams up there, very wealthy people. But he did a lot for the community and this guy says “We’re gonna get that, that boat house off there once and 17
for all.” And so he wrote this article, a degrading article, in the State Journal and Milwaukee Journal. And anyway as a result of it that guy took an early retirement, two years early. I went down and talked to Buzz and told him why the reason why they were going after Sam Johnson and the guy got canned or took an early retirement. Anyway that was one of them, another one was working at Sheboygan on getting the water into the Lake Michigan without running and screwing up Sheboygan; it goes on and on.
Mark: But when you were here you did it informally and then formally you were hired.
Frank: I was sent on these things by Reed to work with different things to encourage them to follow Aldo’s things and then I worked down, through Sam then I worked on the nature centers around Milwaukee, like the Root River and place where their snagging the salmon in the streams, an article in the paper the other day but I had lots and lots of classes there.
Mark: What were the primarily management activities you were doing on this land? You already mentioned a lot of school groups and mowing trails and that.
Frank: Schools here, mowing trails, speeches with different organizations at night or whatever you had to do. But basically we got away from that thing that I think; we got away from game management and we got away from forest management, which I think were two important things that Aldo did. Now part of the board members they would rather have none, you know, we had more deer than we needed that’s for sure. But it’s ridiculous right now we should have seen six or eight deer coming across the marsh here or something and they’re not into, if we get, if we, when we manage the deer we also manage; now we did a project a couple years ago where they cut down, well maybe it’s been six or seven years, time passes pretty fast. And they cut down all the Aspen where we use to shoot ruff grouse cuz the two guys who like to hunt ruff grouse are, were Starker he passed on, that’s Starker pond named after him and Carl, Carl is 90 years old now; he comes regularly he stayed with Cornell University. Estella was here last week with the Seattle University and University of 18
Washington, oh I don’t know if it’s Seattle; she lives, they sent a bunch of stuff out to her today. But anyway.
Mark: When you were managing, though you were managing…
Frank: We were managing without influx mainly from the kids but that, that really didn’t they had lots, Starker especially was into wildlife ponds, he loved to hunt. Carl, Carl did a little bit of hunting but he was; Starker was the one loved hunt grouse and deer and moose and every other damn thing. In Mexico he was in, he was involved in Alaska; he was on the game board, so. He and I kind of hit it off and we would, he would coach me about getting a pond here or whatever and I don’t know how many ponds we built but a lot of them and there’s pictures in here of building ponds.
Mark: So he gave a lot of input into the, the landscape management here?
Frank: I don’t, well to me he did, I don’t know as he did to the family but he got; Starker was the one that was, he was doing research in Alaska and Mexico and he loved, he was a hunter and fishermen more so than the other kids so. And then when, well that may be an upcoming question then we Nina and …
Mark: Well that’s what I was going to ask next. Yeah let’s go into how management changed in 1975 when they came on?
Frank: Well they were interested but they didn’t become part the, they never become part of; they wouldn’t join the Sand County Foundation. They didn’t or I never became involved or why but they figured they had better control if they did it through the family and they had set up their own foundation. Well that created, from an outside view of mind, because they didn’t have the workings of the original foundation they were going their separate way and I, I don’t know if the board, I won’t mention names out here I try, you’ll have to, cut out what you don’t want, you know it’s sensitive but when you don’t have complete you’re all in one but they decided to go with the LMR road rather than Sand County Foundation and they hired 19
a couple of different people that I see them, they never get up period. And then they did some real ridiculous burns that destroyed all kinds of property that, where I had orchids and everything else growing and when you don’t see management from Madison, you know, it cuts the project up so we’re at, where we are today with most of it being done. Thank God by, but we still need better management here on the Reserve. We need directors but we don’t need so many students, we need somebody out in the woods cutting and spraying; my daughter does more spraying for me than I get done from, from kids out of school. And Nina the other day said better get Terri in here to help teach some of the students how to build a fire in the shack for instance.
Mark: So who was directing the management after Nina and Charlie came back, were they directing a lot of the work?
Frank: No they were doing, directing theirs and well there was another, well I guess actually they were responsible for bringing Brent Haglund in from, from Bozeman [Montana] from the University out there. And Charlie, they hired him and then I never see him maybe I haven’t seen him this year and he’s with Sand County and he manages Sand, helps manage Sand County and arrange some of the burns, it’s been ridiculous burns.
Mark: But when you were still manager, were you, were working with Nina and Charlie and others or…
Frank: No, no I just; I was doing my thing.
Mark: Okay.
Frank: And then but if I didn’t like something they’re doing, they damn well got told about it but some of the guys they hired to fire and cut, terrible and, but the guys that were doing it and I’ll say this both, both Kevin and, [Kevin] McAleese now Kevin comes up once in awhile. But they’ve gone different directions, the Sand County Foundation has gone into Zimbabwe into Africa; all over the damn country and giving ten thousand dollar grants to 20
every rancher it seems out west. I just, I’m retired and the, the direction; I can take you right over the hill and you’d probably gag but when you see what they burned over, destroyed all this stuff over on that side.
Steve: Turner’s Ridge.
Frank: Turner Ridge, where Mrs. Turner took me and showed me orchids and stuff, not that it wouldn’t have changed, it would’ve, but not the kind of ridiculous burns that they were doing; they hired a guy that didn’t know anything about burning and then they were going to burn out to the river bottom and maybe open it up like I remember it.
Mark: Right.
Frank: But when you have one or two hundred head of cattle running on the place, it’s a lot difference than taking them off of it, it’s going to grow up. And then as I said you know you can’t live old memories I guess. You can’t remember old girlfriends. [Everyone laughing] Anyway. What do we got?
Steve: So that the Leopold family was managing their property and the Sand County Foundation was managing, around…
Frank: Really and Charlie was, Charlie Bradley was just a remarkable man but, you know, he was getting up there in years too and I worked; Charlie and I burned around the shack just the two of us. And one day Charlie (unclear) “Frank I think you better come over here.” Well it’s a good I did or we’d probably have burned the shack down. But anyway the fire was, I said “Don’t worry about it Charlie.” I’ll just lay a little stream of water down…
Steve: Yeah.
Frank: …and it’s going towards the river when the wind is right so, OK, but…Charlie was good but he, I could; I don’t know if I got on him about that, his, his farewell to the 21
membership was Sand County and we, Charlie and I would drive down and meet at the Madison Club, usually a board meeting, boring. And it didn’t get done but Charlie was never they were trying to do to burning, they were more environmentally oriented Charlie and Nina were more ordered towards prairie restoration and burning than game management and wood management. And when you got this you gotta have a little bit of everything, you can’t do it, you can’t one direction and this was what; well Nina’s 92 years old and I’m, I’ll be 83 and we need some better, we need some better direction from and we can’t have ‘em sitting over in that, that center over there and is never out in the woods. My daughter comes out here and I’ve got her with a hand sprayer or a saw, she doesn’t use a chain saw but, when I was hired I didn’t have a chain saw and that’s written in there, I had one of these axes that you swing and it looked like a Vietcong death trap out there you know. And so it’s a lot of changes over here but it’s, it’s, it’s well worth keeping and preserving and…
Mark: Just, just briefly what was your game management plan?
Frank: Well I wanted a little bit of everything. I wanted to keep our, all of our ---Luna was really ticked off when they took all the Aspen along the, in order to mange ruffed grouse you had to have four age groups of management and there was a fellow in Minnesota, Gorden (unclear) I forget well he’s dead now, he has a game management plan for ruff grouse at, at the University of Minnesota. And in fact it was Bob Ellars, was it Bob Ellarson or what, no who was the other one at, who was at UW?
Steve: Joe, I think.
Frank: No it wasn’t Joe, Joe was my teacher cuz on, or Aldo died in April of ’48 and I had, would have had him in the fall but I had Joe Hicky and Bob McCabe. And a couple others (unclear).
Steve: So, whoever, there, there was one other person at UW who, who you were thinking about that with, with Game Management.
22
Frank: Yeah with Game Management.
Mark: So you were managing for a bunch of different things.
Frank: Yeah.
Mark: For…grouse…
Frank: We were managing, well I could take my, my dog and get two roosters between the shack but you don’t, we don’t but we don’t have the farm portion in there. We don’t have any corn, we don’t have anything that critters can eat except prairie grasses and Steve was trying to tell me “Oh they’re eating all that prairie.” I says, “Hell they’re browsing out there, they don’t have any.” They got to go ‘cross county trunk T and now Sand County bought that and this, except there’s wheat in there right now but it goes for 1700 acres over there without any food crops for game. And then I built, my wildlife ponds and I did cost sharing out here through the feds, you know, there’s fifteen thousand dollars in this pond here but it’s assessed at four thousand dollars an acre.
Mark: Did you, did you plant food crops for the deer?
Frank: Oh sure I had, Tim got’s one he’s got three acres of corn over here right now and every day I kick the cranes out of it but that’s fine. And I mean there’s damn few deer on the place right now except that’s the first; and Tim’s got to shoot a doe now for, he’ll shoot with a doe, well we’re going to get the buck I guess but the doe was well it’s better eating that’s for sure but you can’t, you can’t harvest all the deer and keep shooting deer and deer and deer and without proper food for them and if you’re going to have pheasants you gotta have some ag crops. Pheasants aren’t any good in that stuff. And ruffed grouse you gotta have Aspen so they’re not managing the Aspen properly. But it’s hard to talk to anybody that’s sittin’ on their butt in Madison if they don’t get up here and manage the place. And with Steve, Steve is a real good, Steve Swenson is a real good all around guy but I notice now he’s doing writing over there and stuff and not getting the crew out. In fact that’s what Nina wants to do, she 23
wants to get somebody to train the kids out here when they’re onsite management. And I completely agree, it’s; but it takes money and it takes fund raising.
Mark: What was your forestry plan out here, in the Reserve?
Frank: Well the forestry plan was under, all but ten acres of my farm is in the forestry plan, which anybody that owns land is a damn fool if he doesn’t get out and get it in because I get; my taxes are from this farm are just, including the house, are just over four thousand dollars a year. My neighbor across the street has about twenty acres and his is more than mine is because he doesn’t have it in a forest management plan, which you have to have ten acres minimum and to go in through it. And then you gotta, you gotta do cuts, certain time I cut twice; I cut a hundred thousand board feet once and sixty-seven thousand feet and when we were doing cut…
Mark: There’s a deer.
Steve: Yeah. Just ran by, a yearling.
Frank: Yearling.
Steve: Yeah.
Frank: Hooray a deer! Well Tim’s maybe’s out hunting. There’s one big, great big buck out here that, the older boy Pat is a mining engineer at Fon du Lac. And Tim shot this one that’s in the, in the cooler up there; he shot that just down the road but he’s waiting for that big one. Okay, next, next question.
Mark: Well let me ask you this cuz you’ve talk about it, we might as well get it on tape now. What, how would specifically like to see this place managed in the future?
24
Frank: Well I would manage, management with more with, I don’t know what comes first but anyway both forestry and game management; you got to have some game management plans, you can’t beat everything into prairie, I like prairie, I do like it. And we love those prairie flowers but they don’t feed game and they all say “Oh they do feed game we see all these browse counts and got flags all over the place at what the deer are eating.” I said “But the deer aren’t there.” And the young man that’s the head of the deer management, what’s his, God his name is in the paper all the time now he’s really taken it on in but I think that we should have a member of the board that’s on the, for the state level like we had before; we’ve got people that we don’t, how do you keep politics out it (unclear). We need more onsite managers here they can’t be sitting over in that, I go over there and everybody’s in the, over there writing. There’s one of Steve’s here but Steve isn’t; I’ve noticed Steve isn’t getting out and getting into the working part of it. If I were here I’d have, well I had my walking trails cuz that get those disabled or, to different parts to see what’s happening. I’d have maybe, I hate science, but (unclear) and they get plenty of tours here but they gotta say what they’re doing for game management that we’re harvesting. All my farm except ten acres, in fact here’s my map I got yesterday from my forester and this, this is the Leopold Shack and here’s our land here and it says whether it’s in the trust or whether it’s in and everything oh the things are in the red, in the red here are my, that’s in the forest management plan but that’s all forest the rest of it pretty much marsh.
Mark: Yeah.
Frank: But that’s stuff is at a lower tax rate then, you know, it’s hard; I told my farmer across the road over here that he could save at least two to three thousand dollars a year on his taxes if he’d get a managed forestry plan, which you have to have a minimum of ten acres to get into it and you have to agree to do certain things on it. You got to harvest it when it’s ready, plant trees, do things to improve it and, but this is my forester today sent me a map like this of what, I can only harvest about or manage about and then you can sign up for a grant for forestry grants to do, to kill buckthorn, to kill reed canary grass, well not reed canary grass that one we haven’t tackled yet, garlic mustard and so but I’d like my trees right here but I can’t do it for a couple years yet but when we do it next time it’s going to be worth fifty 25
thousand dollars cash for the trees. So that’s added money that goes back into the Foundation and now when we, if we were to sell the Foundation, our land, they will, either they will enter the forest plan or I have to pay back taxes on it. And also I have twenty-four acres of, of CRP…
Mark: Conservation Reserve.
Frank: …and things like that so.
Mark: Earlier you were talking about deer and we saw one here.
Frank: Yeah good.
Mark: How did, how did deer management change under the LMR?
Frank: Well right they issue permits to shoot as many deer as, well.
Mark: But how was it in the early days, in the sixties when you first set up the reserve?
Frank: Well before we started I was hunting in Forest County I wasn’t hunting here. And then our, just, what happened wasn’t so much what we did here it’s what the farmers around the area were more corn, more hay; things became better and probably more hunters going up north like I did.
Mark: Yep.
Frank: And then I come back and I said “Jesus.” I had my best buddy, who died at age 47, when we’d come back from a hunt in Alaska and we’re out here and three bucks came out right by the shack over there and he shot all three of them. We were really, well it didn’t happen like that he shot a buck and then he said “I’ll make a drive cuz I know there’s another 26
buck.” Made a drive and it, ran back to him and he shot it. And he did it a third time and I said, “You’re grounded.”
Mark: How about the overall reserve, did you work with the other landowners to come up with a deer management…?
Frank: No we didn’t work with any, no everybody in fact the guys on the other side of the highway posted their land and wouldn’t let anybody on it and they’d come over and had permission to hunt over here. And they were coming over here to hunt cuz they know there were more deer. No we didn’t have much cooperation except I cut the numbers of hunters down on our farm to our family and several others; we had a total of probably twelve hunters on our farm and we all quote “filled our tags” or whatever, we bow hunt we don’t rifle hunt much, mostly bow hunting. And Starker or Aldo would have like that because he hunted with a bow in Mexico I think. And when he met Estella down in, in…
Mark: Yeah she was a famous archer.
Frank: Yeah.
Mark: Let me ask you one more thing and I’ll let Steve ask you some questions, he’s been waiting very patiently but we heard this from Reed and you mentioned the mowing of the trails and so on. How did you lay out those trails? How did you decide where to put the trails?
Frank: You just look at the lay of the land and what’s a good trail to walk to see trees, the marsh, wildlife ponds, waterfowl, whatever and I got, I had, at least up until my health failed; I have trails out over the ditch banks and where only brave people fair can walk on except my son Tim, he’ll go anywhere but he hasn’t buried it yet.
Mark: Alright well let me let Steve ask some questions. He’s been waiting very patiently.
27
Steve: Yeah I had a couple questions, you mentioned Reed a lot. How is Howard Mead involved with you?
Frank: Well Howard, I guess, Howard was the editor of Wisconsin Trails Magazine and Nancy, I never have, Nancy, I don’t think, wasn’t involved up here at all but Howard just thought it was a good idea; he’s environmentally oriented but he was in lots of things. Howard is just been in things all of his life and now mainly was riding bicycles but except Nancy said “If he doesn’t start keeping up I’m not taking him anymore.” I said “Nancy!” They were going to Italy.
Steve: We heard from Reed that, that it was the three of you that sat down together…
Frank: Well at the first time we, we did but we; Howie was not really involved in it except in the very beginning, beginning but I haven’t seen Howard in several years. And he was, Howard was in, in lots of different things…
Steve: Okay
Frank: …you know, but Howard was there when we started because he was getting some good write-ups, probably in Wisconsin Trails, and he was and Howard is a real neat guy, so. We met his family when they were young but we haven’t had any contact in years but Howard was there from its, I think maybe to steer Reed along the way.
Steve: In the early days.
Frank: Yeah.
Steve: And then I had one other question you mentioned that schools groups came out here like 1965, right around that time. So would schools just, did you contact the schools or did they hear about you and call you?
28
Frank: No they just got word of the, word of the; it was a good, cheap, probably.
[Some speaking at same time]
Steve: Was it a, they’d come out…
Frank: They’d come out with a school bus and…
Steve: For a couple of hours or so.
Frank: Yeah they would, and some and the Baraboo schools would be out here at maybe five, five-thirty in the morning and he was the best teacher, Gerald Scott and (unsure of name) and his, he was the best, he led more students to better environments; John Horton, he died last year, he was a conservationist; he owned Hawks Garden Center in Milwaukee and he’s just a terrific guy.
Steve: Yeah.
Frank: And, but he, he led more people to, to the environmental field than anybody I ever knew.
Mark: Now did you lead those tours?
Frank: Yeah, I led the tours and we had two places where we could guide the bus up in here, see and hear the grouse drumming off the log.
Steve: Okay so you were teaching them, you were teaching about natural history?
Frank: Well I guess you call it natural history; I call it ruffed grouse management.
Mark: Did you teach about Leopold? 29
Frank: Pardon.
Mark: Did you, I’m sorry I’m stepping on Steve here but I wanted, I’m curious, did you teach them about Aldo Leopold?
Frank: Oh they had already had that in high school. He was a…
Mark: A better education back then.
Frank: Better, oh the biology teacher; he was fantastic. Oh yeah we, Leopold we read, well, no couldn’t read Sand County Almanac well yeah I guess we could but he, not only led them here, he led them at every phase of Devil’s Lake; we’re blessed here in Sauk County.
Steve: Yeah, yeah.
Frank: But we had people, with these buses coming in from oh I, I don’t know if I made a list of all of them but there’s a lot of them that you could go down to Root River down at Sam Johnson’s and they’re in the different prairies, I think we went to Minnesota to see Gordon Gullion was the guy with ruff grouse…
Steve: Oh okay.
Frank: …Gordon Gullion. We went up there, we went up there with Bob Ellarson and Orrin Rongstad, Orrin and Bob were both hand in hand but my professors, when I go back to think the guys I had, jeesh I had the, I had Norm Fassett, I had, what’s the, the one’s that; all the ones that helped build the arboretum in Madison, I mean I had the very finest, Henry Ahlgren was my advisor. And some guys that were in the University, oh that was, I’m trying to think what’s (unclear) but they had a big discussion, five out of the four, five guys, whether they should take two extra cases of beer or when we were going, they were going north and they ask me to come in and consult what they should take on their trip up north. I said, “I think you better take a canoe and a life preserver.” You know, anyway, but the guys that I had 30
when Emil Truog in Soils, all these good professors I had I just lucked out that’s all. I was, I got out, I got discharged on a Friday and my dad originally on Monday and my roommate was first string quarterback at the University of Wisconsin and that was in ’44, he was roommate and his two good guys that were with him was, Har, no that was Ted, he had Harvey Kuehn in baseball with. But the other ones were there football players were, one played for the Chicago Bears, Don Kent played for Chicago Bears and the other one, the other one kicked for Detroit Lions, that was Elroy, not Elroy---
(End of Tape 1 at minute 59:10, start tape 2)
Frank: …and Fred Nagas, if you know who Fred Nagas was.
Mark: Yeah.
Frank: And he played football too but those guys picnic and I on Wednesday night and we worked on Jordan’s out on Regent and Allen slinging hamburgers.
Steve: Yeah.
Frank: And we picked us up and they would, I didn’t play I was too little but Elroy could take about three bounces down the hill and he’d stuff it, you know, right there. And they were all singing L A V A, Lava soap ad, you know, and Elroy would start singing L A V and that’s…
Steve: Yeah.
Frank: But anyway. I had fun growing up, I’ll tell you it’s.
Mark: Do you have any more questions while I’m switching tapes.
31
Steve: Well I guess, I’ll, I’ll ask a little bit more about the school groups. You said you had all the way down to age eight? You said you didn’t like…
Frank: I didn’t like kids at (unclear). I liked the kids that were in junior high school and up and that were taking, well mainly biology…
Steve: Okay, so it’s for their biology.
Frank: …mainly biology but then I got this one from I know from Madison that these were, well they need a fair chance but we’ve got a school between here and Baraboo, Fairfield Center School, that has five or six students; I don’t know what they’re budget is to run this place but they got them out there, they got this open, they mow their grass. It looks like, I don’ t think we should waste our, the way the educational thing is; I’d close that thing and put them somewhere in Baraboo. But he says “Well we got the facilities we got…” They got a soccer field out there and they got a baseball and a basketball and I don’t think our economy today; they can get those kids in Baraboo somewhere, not to run a separate facility for this, so.
Steve: Yeah.
Frank: I should run for school board but I don’t, I’m too old for that.
Mark: I’ve got one final question for you that’s on here and I think it’s a good one, it’s a good summation one and that is, it’s kind of a two part one but do you think the Reserve met the original expectations…?
Frank: Not yet, I don’t think it’s met it yet because I think we need, we need less supervision over there and more people out in the field getting project work done and you know, I know there are days when you can’t get out well then but it seems like they’re doing one, probably, top one right now is fundraising. Now I just heard today and I don’t well I guess that’s, I’ll tell you that after we tape, but. We, you need “x” numbers of dollars coming in to run a place like this and I don’t know what that is between because I say; every month I get something 32
from Sand County where another ten thousand dollars here, another ten thousand dollars here, in Zimbabwe, God knows where in the United States that they’re money’s going to. And we started off as a, as a organization up here but there’s a separation between the two foundations, you know, you got to have dollars rolling in they’ve got Bob Lang over there with fund raising. And, and then you got Buddy and Steve and then you got Alana with, suppose to be running the Reserve, some of the stuff. I got, I gave them, I had a fifteen thousand dollar grant this year, five thousand, seventy-five hundred cash. And they didn’t get done on that what they were suppose to get done and that’s, I couldn’t do it so I gave it to them for seventy-five hundred cash and I think, don’t think they got the check yet but I was disappointed entirely with getting the garlic mustard sprayed in the prairie. They said well they couldn’t spray it, I said “How come my boy, who I don’t even want firing one night burned over two hundred acres (unclear).” That night I looked up and the whole hillside was on fire up there, he had my tanker up there burning probably been drinking Miller Light and burning and that’s not the way it’s done.
Mark: And I think you told us what your future goals are and that would be more game management and forestry.
Frank: I think, well…
Mark: Or tell us (unclear) the things you don’t mention.
Frank: Well, yeah, more people in the field and less in the office.
Mark: Okay. I guess one other thing we should ask is, is cuz you’ve talked a little about it but what, what aspects of Leopold either the person or his writings has inspired you all these years?
Frank: Well I didn’t really; I didn’t know Aldo to know him. We’d probably been out here shooting ducks (unclear) but anyway the, the, I think that he would have liked more game management and more forestry; he’s ahead of the Forestry Department for God’s sake and, 33
you know, that’s reason enough and then game management he wrote the book. And we don’t have game management up here except for what little I do and I try to get some food patches but if I were to go up and plant food patches I’d probably get shot or not shot but; they don’t, they don’t want more deer but you can have control of deer by shooting more does and, and which they did but Tim blames the reserve for everything if he doesn’t see deer every night, you know. And then the Department of Natural Resources right now is screwing up here, now this was a mark yesterday in the paper about how many deer they had in southwestern Wis, southwestern Wisconsin. Well I, I don’t like my name in the paper but Frank Tiggs writing articles about deer management in Sauk County but here, right particular, here but we don’t have; somebody told me they saw a grouse the other day, the first time a grouse we’ve seen in three or four years, why have a season? Why have a pheasant season when they’re all coming from Pardeeville or from the game farm? That’s not game management, game management is getting the habitat when you can afford or can raise the birds. And all we’re doing is supporting the DNR and then get somebody, the head of the DNR, that’s not politically inclined, so.
Mark: Steve did you have any questions.
Steve: I guess I’d like to hear how you did that beautiful prairie restoration out outside of…
Frank: Well.
Steve: …the road right down here.
Frank: That four thousand dollar prairie restoration per acre. I just was up there, were you up there today or did you…?
Mark: We went by it…
Steve: On the drive.
34
Mark: …yeah on the way.
Frank: Before we go out there why don’t we take a quick drive up to show the view of it and then show you what my neighbor just built up there. But anyway he’s across the fence and he just had a stroke or a heat attack so he needs a place to hunt deer but I thought he did it a little extravagant. Anyway the, I, there’s an article, whole article written on the prairie there for you, you’re taking with you.
Steve: Okay.
Frank: That’s on Signey Holtz. In 1840 there was probably better prairie then because we didn’t have the trees and same thing on the river bottom; it grew up. And we use to have, what’s the, the little bird, “peents” in there.
Steve: Woodcock.
Frank: Woodcock, we use to have woodcock over there when it was more open. You could; woodcock come in there in the fall and, about now, and I could jump woodcock everywhere. Not now because it’s different, a different phase. Well if you’re gonna manage; and then we had all the cattle over there that grazed it, it was never like it is now and there never was such a thing as a, as the burn, the sand blow, that was all just cattle that were rubbing their butts on the, up on the hill because they had to get there or drown. And the, and the mowing of the marsh hay was another phase of it and farming is another phase of it.
Steve: And that’s where that land is?
Frank: Yeah I’ll walk you through there one, someday when you’re up if you want to take a, I’ll ride with, I’ll borrow the (unclear) I can’t walk anymore. But the, but you know everything was a different phase of our life and the same with the deer management herd, but the DNR need “x” number of dollars to keep these guys in Madison busy and I hesitate to jump on them because (unclear) talk to him one on one and show him, just come up and sit in 35
my yard. Well you saw it, we saw deer, we said; I’ve seen half dozen good bucks, the rut’s starting and now so they’re coming across through that thing. I saw a buck there the other day I hope Pat gets a shot at that one so, well we can look at this one that Tim got up here (unclear)
Mark: Did you have anymore?
Steve: No, that’s good.
Mark: Thank you Frank, appreciate it.